ABSTRACT
Questions about institutions are important for the social sciences. Social scientists have always been interested in explaining institutional arrangements and analyzing their effects with regard to the conduct of specific social functions. This is particularly evident in the new institutionalism, which suggests that human behavior takes place and can only be understood in the context of institutions. These include formal or informal organizations, rules of politics, ways of communication, the logic of strategic situations, and cognitive or interpretive frameworks. They influence the ways in which individuals pursue certain courses of action, behave as members of a collective, and select desirable goals and means. Even if institutions fail to shape individual behavior in the fashion that was desired, the answer can be obtained only from the institutions themselves (Immergut 1998; Hall and Taylor 1996; Steinmo et al. 1992; DiMaggio and Powell 1991). New institutionalists also argue that institutions, although by definition they connote stability, are subject to incremental and discontinuous changes themselves (Scott 2001: 48). Institutions are, therefore, “maintained and reproduced” in the change processes (Pierson 2004: 14).
