Institutions, Ideas and Learning

Abstract

By paraphrasing Richard Nixon, ‘we are institutionalists now’, Pierson (2003: 1) indicates, with some polemic, the popularity the new institutionalist approach has experienced since its (re-)appearance on the agenda of social sciences in the second half of the 1980s. In this chapter, new institutionalism – and especially historical institutionalism with its path dependence theorem – is reviewed (Section 1). The prevalent stability bias of this literature is addressed by emphasising institutional incoherence and diversity, the discretion of agency and the structuring impact of ideas in policymaking as endogenous sources for transformative institutional change, which can be linked with policy learning as a mechanism for knowledge-based institutional change (Section 2). This will be followed by introducing the concept of policy learning, before briefly outlining an institutional approach towards learning, which is ascribed the capacity for integration into new institutionalism (Section 3).