Historical Institutionalism in Rationalist and Sociological Perspective

Some of the most fruitful insights generated by social science in recent decades flow from explorations of how institutions, under­ stood as sets of regularized practices with a rule-like quality, struc­ ture the behavior of political and economic actors. I It is not surpris­ ing that attention has now turned to the second-order problem of explaining when and how institutions change. 2 In conceptual terms, however, this task is intrinsically difficult. By their nature, analy­ ses designed to explain why institutions have a persistent impact on behavior tend to overstate the solidity of institutions. Acknowledging their plasticity raises questions about when institutions should be seen as determinants of behavior and when as objects of strategic action themselves) This problem afflicts rational-choice approaches to institutions with particular intensity because of the elegant solutions such analyses have devised to explain the force and persistence of institutions. Typically, they see institutions as patterns of regularized behavior that reflect Pareto-optimal equilibria or subgame perfect solutions to collective