ABSTRACT
Douglas Puffert’s elegant formulation describes path dependence as “the dependence of economic outcomes on the path of previous outcomes, rather than simply on current conditions.” But what is the difference between “previous outcomes” and “current conditions” and how can the former have causal effect in the present if not through the latter? In an article for Theory and Society, James Mahoney argues that “path dependence characterizes specifically those historical sequences in which contingent events set into motion institutional patterns or event chains that have deterministic properties.” Should chains of developments, however, be described as path dependent only if their initiating events are contingent, that is, not amenable to systematic explanation? Margaret Levi claims that “path dependence has to mean, if it is to mean anything, that once a country or region has started down a track, the costs of reversal are very high.” Subsequent inquiries into the costs of reversal have been revealing, but does this definition capture the full range of causal processes seemingly referenced by the concept? There is strong agreement in the literature that the concept of path dependence describes an important set of phenomena, but agreement on precisely what those phenomena are has been elusive.
