Explaining Institutional Change: Ambiguity, Agency, and Power - Softcover

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0521134323 ISBN 13: 9780521134323

Publisher: Cambridge University Press, 2009

Synopsis

This book contributes to emerging debates in political science and sociology on institutional change. Its introductory essay proposes a new framework for analyzing incremental change that is grounded in a power-distributional view of institutions and that emphasizes ongoing struggles within but also over prevailing institutional arrangements. Five empirical essays then bring the general theory to life by evaluating its causal propositions in the context of sustained analyses of specific instances of incremental change. These essays range widely across substantive topics and across times and places, including cases from the United States, Africa, Latin America, and Asia. The book closes with a chapter reflecting on the possibilities for productive exchange in the analysis of change among scholars associated with different theoretical approaches to institutions.

About this title

Book Description

This book contributes to emerging debates in political science and sociology on institutional change. The introductory essay proposes a new framework for analyzing incremental change, and subsequent chapters provide empirical case studies from the United States, Africa, Latin America, and Asia.

About the Author

James Mahoney is a Professor of Political Science and sociology at Northwestern University. He is the author of The Legacies of Liberalism: Path Dependence and Political Regimes in Central America (2001), which received the Barrington Moore Jr. Prize of the Comparative and Historical Section of the American Sociological Association. He is also coeditor of Comparative Historical Analysis in the Social Sciences (Cambridge, 2003), which received the Giovanni Sartori Book Award of the Qualitative Methods Section of the American Political Science Association. His most recent book is Colonialism and Postcolonial Development: Spanish America in Comparative Perspective (Cambridge, 2010).

About this edition

• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Publication date: 2009
• ISBN 10: 0521134323
• ISBN 13: 9780521134323
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 254
• Editor: Mahoney James, Thelen Kathleen