This course is designed to provide students with a thorough grounding in social science research on institutions and institutional change, covering both evolutionary (path dependency) and revolutionary aspects of change (institutional breakdowns, critical junctures, and bricolages). The course introduces the major schools of institutionalist thought and discusses how they interpret social change. The fact that institutions can be both formal and informal makes it particularly difficult to develop a comprehensive theory of institutional change. Informal institutions are important for both the functioning and the change of formal institutions. Moreover, in some societies informal institutions play a more important role in "getting things done" than in others. A somewhat simplified way of classifying societies in terms of the importance of informal institutions is the "North-South" divide, or the difference between liberal market societies and democracies and less advanced or authoritarian countries.

The seminar explores the theoretical underpinnings of the existing empirical evidence on institutional change. It will enable participants to apply different academic concepts to study and discuss specific cases and cases of the interaction of formal and informal institutions, as well as blocked and accelerated change. close