Institutional Change: Old and New Institutionalism

Abstract

This chapter puts forward a brief review of old and new institutionalism. This is functional to the next chapter, where I will use these concepts to build my model of institutional change in transition economies. Moreover, this chapter also analyses the main definitions and classifications of institutions. Broadly speaking, institutions may be defined as a set of rules, social norms and prescribed patterns of correlated behaviour which affect social interaction and therefore structure economic organisation (Foster, 1981; Knight, 1992; Nugent and Lin, 1995; Hodgson, 2006).