Explanations of Institutional Change: Reflecting on a “Missing Diagonal”

Gerschewski, Johannes Article — Published Version Explanations of Institutional Change: Reflecting on a “Missing Diagonal” American Political Science Review Provided in Cooperation with: WZB Berlin Social Science Center Suggested Citation: Gerschewski, Johannes (2021) : Explanations of Institutional Change: Reflecting on a “Missing Diagonal”, American Political Science Review, ISSN 1537-5943, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, Vol. 115, Iss. 1, pp. 218-233, https://doi.org/10.1017/S0003055420000751 This Version is available at: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/228451 Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen: Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden. Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen. 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This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution licence (http:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Explanations of Institutional Change: Reflecting on a “Missing Diagonal” JOHANNES GERSCHEWSKI WZB Berlin Social Science Center Previous research on institutional change has concentrated on two types of explanations. On one hand, the dualism of path dependency and critical junctures has advanced our understanding of how institutional change occurs due to sudden exogenous shocks. On the other hand, more recent critiques have established a better understanding of endogenous, gradual change. This article is motivated by observations that current research tends to overlook what I call the “missing diagonal.”I argue that we need to disentangle the sources of a cause (exogenous vs. endogenous) from its time horizon (sudden vs. gradual). By cross-tabulating these two dimensions, the proposed typology of institutional change explanations is able to capture complex multilayered as well as sequential arguments of institutional change. The typology urges scholars to be more precise with their social science language of erosion and decay, while serving as a generator for an innovative research agenda on endogenous ruptures. INTRODUCTION This article finds its motivation in a current imbalance. In my view, the theoretical debate about explaining institutional change revolves around two distinct poles. On one hand, the bread-and-butter theorem of neo-institutionalists—the “punctuated equilibrium”(Krasner 1984, 226) of path dependency and critical juncture (Arthur 1994; Capoccia and Kelemen 2007; Collier and Collier 1991; Pierson 2000a)— emphasize sudden and exogenously induced change. On the other hand, a powerful recent critique of this approach to understanding change has taken a markedly different perspective by outlining gradual processes that slowly undermine institutional substance. The main drivers for this type of change are not seen as exogenous shocks but rather in terms of incremental endogenous developments (Bernhard 2015; Mahoney and Thelen 2010; Weyland 2008). These two poles of exogenous rupture versus endogenous gradual change dominate current research and mark opposite ends of a continuum in explaining institutional change. Against this backdrop, I argue that we tend to overlook a “missing diagonal.”This article stresses that the source of change (endogenous vs. exogenous) and the time horizon by which the cause for change operates (sudden vs. gradual) should not be conflated into one. Instead, they should be kept analytically separate to open up a two-dimensional typological space. This allows for four distinct types of change to be accounted for: (1) sudden, exogenously driven ruptures, (2) sudden, endogenously driven ruptures, (3) gradual, exogenously driven change, and (4) gradual, endogenously driven change. The proposed typology seeks to uncover and make explicit the inner architecture of arguments about institutional change, which are often left implicit in the literature. It is intended to identify its (hidden) argumentation structures and accentuate their (often blurred) contours. In this light, the articleis dedicated to introducing this new typology of explaining institutional change, discussing its strengths and weaknesses, and demonstrating its added value by reinterpreting classic and more recent studies. In general, any new typology needs to pass three tests in order to make an original contribution. First, it must demonstrate that the new types correspond to the most salient ways in which a phenomenon occurs. To serve its purpose, the typology introduced here needs to capture the most important explanations for institutional change. Any new typology should find a fair balance between zooming out to provide an adequate overview while also remaining fine-grained enough to cover the most fundamental types of explaining change. It should strive to bring relevant order to a fuzzy field. Second, a new typology should go beyond the classification task by also being able to substantively add to our explanations of institutional change. New types should not only be discriminating against other types—that is, be mutually exclusive and jointly exhaustive—they should also develop explanatory power in their own right. Finally, any new typology should ideally be a generator for new research questions by opening up avenues for future research that hadbeenoverlookedbyoldertypologies.Theseare the three tests that a new typology should pass Johannes Gerschewski , Research Fellow, WZB Berlin Social Science Center, [email protected]. Over multiple rounds of revisions, this paper gradually grew in directions that I did not foresee at the beginning. I am deeply indebted to the insightful comments and generous advice that the editors of APSR as well as the four anonymous reviewers offered over the course of the project. The paper also greatly benefited from discussions with colleagues at the WZB, the Berlin Summer School 2019, TU Munich, and the EDP Network. I am grateful to Tim Büthe, Frieda Busse, Ellen Immergut, Álvaro Morcillo Laiz, Tobi Rommel, Daniel Schulz, Aiko Wagner, and Michael Zürn for a variety of enormously stimulating suggestions. For excellent research assistance, I thank Louisa Difliff, Steffen Schlosser, Cheng Han Lee, and Louisa Böttner. Received: September 08, 2018; revised: April 26, 2020; accepted: July 21, 2020. 218 (Capecchi 1968; Collier, Laporte, and Seawright 2008; Elman 2005; Lazarsfeld 1992). In the following sections, I will demonstrate that the proposed typology meets these three challenges. First, I argue that the new typology is able to capture the most important explanatory patterns of institutional change by reviewing landmark studies using the new typological perspective.Thetypologyisabletosynthesizetheseworks in an innovative way while providing added analytical value. This becomes particularly important when dissectingcomplexchangeargumentsthatinvolvesequentialand multilayered processes with varying temporalities. Second, the new typology augments existing explanations of institutional change. In political science, erosion is an oft-used (and oft-misused) metaphor to explain all kinds of gradual processes that undermine political substance, whether endogenous or exogenous. Yet,we shouldbe preciseinourpoliticalscience explanations. Erosion processes are exogenously driven, whereas processes of decay are endogenous. This is not semantics or splitting hairs but rather an attempt to gain a clearer understanding of these processes in order to craft more nuanced explanations. To illustrate this point, I will use the debate on the global decline of democratic quality as an example. Third, the new typology serves as a generator for innovative research questions. It highlights forms of institutional change that have been underexplored in previous research. Being overshadowed by arguments on either exogenous shocks or endogenous gradualism, I argue that we observe a “missing diagonal”—that is, exogenous gradual change and endogenous ruptures. Particularly the latter deserves more attention in politicalscience.Endogenousrupturesarelargelyunderstudied in our discipline. Compared with their exogenous counterparts, they have received less theoretical and empirical attention. Yet, they constitute a captivating and distinct type of change. The typology identifies endogenous ruptures as a promising research field and serves as an incubator for new research questions. The remainder of the article is structured as follows. First, I will introduce the new typology by disentangling the two axes, the source of the cause (endogenous vs. exogenous) and its time horizon (sudden vs. gradual). Second, I will explicatethe four types of explanations for institutional change. I outline their rationales, provide an intuitive natural science metaphor to illustrate their inner logics, and reinterpret landmark studies through these lenses. Third, I will show that the typology provides added analytical value. It is capable of dissecting complex change processes, making a clear distinction between erosion and decay, and pointing toendogenous ruptures as an innovative future research agenda. A TYPOLOGY OF INSTITUTIONAL CHANGE Previous Focus in Explaining Institutional Change The most widespread approach in explaining institutional change is the idea of a “punctuated equilibrium” (Eldredge and Gould 1972)—that is, a dual model of path dependency and critical junctures. Longer phases of institutional stability are interrupted by short moments of institutional flux in which sudden change is made possible. These critical junctures are routinely defined as brief and consequential moments in time. Major change happens in condensed periods of time. The choice at the critical juncture canalizes future choices and leads to self-reinforcing reproduction mechanisms (Pierson 2000a). Among others, prominent macrohistorical comparisons (Collier and Collier 1991; Mahoney 2001b; Moore [1966] 1993), policy analyses (Baumgartner and Jones 1993), and more recently studies in international relations and global governance (Fioretos 2017;Zürn2018) have set the explanatory agenda. However, how these brief and consequential moments in which change is made possible emerge in the first place remains unclear. This lacuna is the weak spot of the neo-institutionalist theorem of critical juncture and path dependency (Dunning2017). Change comes in the form of a sudden and exogenous shock, but it remains by and large an unexplained explainer. Against this backdrop, a powerful line of critique has developed. Instead of thinking about exogenous shocks as the explainer for institutional change, it argues to focus more on endogenous and gradual forms of change (Greif and Laitin 2004; Mahoney and Thelen 2010; Streeck and Thelen 2005; Weyland 2008). Institutions have been thought to exhibit so much internal inertia and stickiness that, once created, institutional reproduction and stabilization was the more natural research focus, whereas theoretical leverage for thinking about change has been relatively small (Immergut 2006). However, Knight (1992) has already reminded us that we should see institutions as power-laden vehicles and that there is constant struggle over the proper meaning of an institution. In this light, our attention in institutionalist explanations should be focused on deficiencies in both rule making and rule taking. Institutions “often remain ambiguous and always are subject to interpretation, debate, and contestation”(Mahoney and Thelen 2010, 11). Enactment and enforcement problems, regulatory loopholes, control gaps, and circumventions as well as semantic struggles, imprecisions, implicit assumptions, and cognitive limits of rule-takers are some of the endogenous sources that endow actors pushing for change. These types of endogenous change are seen as incremental. Streeck and Thelen (2005,31) helpfully characterize “five types of gradual transformation,” demonstrating its internal variety: exhaustion, drift, layering, displacement, and conversion. In all of these five processes, endogenous causes work over longer periods to alter existing institutional substance. Two innovations are particularly important. First, previous approaches in neo-institutionalism tended to overlook that rule compliance should not be taken for granted (see also Levitsky and Murillo 2009). Instead, compliance with the institution is a key variable and not a fixed parameter. This insight opens up space for thinking more systematically about change that is Explanations of Institutional Change: Reflecting on a “Missing Diagonal” 219 caused within the institution itself. Second, different types of change agents are identified that can push gradually within the institutional boundaries for alternatives. Institutions define only what is “legitimately expected behavior”(Knight 1992, 15). That means that institutions shape actions and “exert patterned higherorder effects”(Clemens and Cook 1999, 444). Yet, they are not to be misunderstood as straightjackets. They leave interpretational gaps and room for maneuver, which change agents can gradually make use of. These change agents constitute the movers that are needed for explainingincrementalchange. Whereasin the previous dualism of critical juncture and path dependence the exogenous shock is the cause that carries the explanatory weight, here it is the endogenous enabling and endowing of actors that use their operative leeway within an institution. Institutions become plastic (Hall 2016). The agents are able to gradually replace and modify the institutional arrangement in which they operate. Table 1 shows the two dominant poles in explaining institutional change, disentangling already the source of the cause from its time horizon. The “Missing Diagonal”: Moving Towards a Full Typology of Institutional Change Reviewing these theoretical perspectives, I argue that the dominant arguments about institutional change conflate two dimensions. In current accounts, the source and the time horizon of the cause for change seem to be too tightly coupled. They do not need to correlate as much as the state of art suggests. On one hand, punctuated equilibrium relies on exogenous shocks that operate rapidly. On the other hand, the recent critique closely links endogenously caused change with gradual long-term processes. I propose to explicitly disentangle them from each other. I organize the fuzzy field of institutional change along two axes: (1) the sources of the cause and (2) the time horizon of how long the cause operates. By opening up a twodimensional space, the typology highlights a “missing diagonal”in our explanations of institutional change. The first axis is the source for institutional change. The driver for change can be exogenous or endogenous. Please note that an exogenous cause is not only external to an institution but also generated outside this very institution, thus working from the outside in. In contrast, a cause can also emerge within the institution itself, being so a product of inherent institutional properties and working from the inside out. An illustrative way of understanding the difference between exogenous and endogenous is to delineate system from its environment as natural scientists routinely do. For example, in a chemical reaction the system is the mixture of elements that react with each other, separated by the glass wall of a test tube. Everything happening outside the test tube is environment. The work of social scientists is usually less straightforward than this natural science analogy suggests. The complex interplay and interconnectedness of political and social phenomena complicates the distinction between not only internal and external (location) but also endogenous and exogenous factors (location plus generation). The glass wall of the test tube needs often to be explicitly established, putting the researcher’s perspective on center stage. Compared with natural scientists, social scientists engage more actively in defining what lies inside or outside the test tube and in determining whether a cause is actually generated within or outside the test tube. Additionally, as Greif and Laitin (2004) argue, what counts as an exogenous and an endogenous factor can also vary over time. A factor can be exogenous to an institution in the short run, but it can be endogenized in the institutionalist explanation in the long run. Yet, the guiding idea from the test tube analogy should be transferred to the social sciences. It is rightly noted that institutions are an “ill-defined concept” (Scharpf 1997, 38) and that there is some Babylonian confusion about what an institution is and what it entails. Thinking of the social science equivalent to the glass wall of the test tube can be understood as a plea for greater analytical precision in drawing the borders of an institution, clarifying what is generated inside and outside of it. In making the amorphous concept of institutions more manageable, the work of Crawford and Ostrom (1995) on a common “grammar of institutions”provides a helpful guide here. Answers to the following five key questions force us to make explicit the often implicit understanding of the institution under study: To whom does the institution actually apply (A)? What is the deontic operator (D)? What is the aim (I)? What are the conditions (C)? And, what TABLE 1. Dominant Approaches in Explaining Institutional Change Time horizon of cause Short Long Source of cause Exogenous to institution Exogenous shock that suddenly disrupts longer phases of institutional inertia Endogenous to institution Endogenous actors that contest rule compliance from within and gradually push for institutional change Note: Source: Own table. Johannes Gerschewski 220 sanctions are to be imposed for deviant behavior (“or else,”O)? This ADICO scheme helps scholars to be more precise about what the institution actually entails (and to decide what is endogenous and exogenous to it). We should also be aware that a social science institution is never as sterile as a test tube. Therefore, an endogenous institutional explanation refers not only to the chemical elements—the explanatory factors—that a social scientist deliberately selects and puts into the test tube but also to the bulges, dents, and cracks of the tube’s wall as well as potential internal impurities, pollutions, and contaminations. It is these institutional imperfections that a social scientist needs to consider in an endogenous explanation. Inherent institutional properties empower or even produce actors so that institutions contain within themselves the seeds for change. A guiding rule of thumb for concrete research projects is to take the literal meaning of endogeneity seriously. An endogenous explanation means that institutional properties generate within this very institution change agents and structural dynamics that cause the institution to change. Besides the source of the cause, the second axis of the typology refers to the time horizon of the cause. The cause can either work suddenly and create brief moments of rupture or operate incrementally over long stretches of time (Abbott 2001; Pierson 2000b;2004). The general idea is to take the temporal structure of variables and explanations more seriously (Büthe 2002; Griffin 1992; Grzymala-Busse 2011; Sewell 1996). Here, I account for one crucial temporal distinction: duration as the temporal length in which a cause works. 1 A cause can hit the target institution suddenly like a karate chop. A financial crisis might be an adequate social science equivalent here, often creating turbulence in which institutional actors have insufficient time to adapt to changing circumstances, instead needing to react hastily. Or, the causal effect of one variable on another may be stretched out to gradually unfold over extended periods, working like the “termites in the basement”(Mahoney and Thelen 2010, 31; Streeck and Thelen 2005). In social sciences, adequate equivalents are “‘sociological’variables like demography, literacy, or technology”(Pierson 2004, 14). In contrast to the sudden fluidity of a crisis, these causes operate with a longer time horizon. It is difficult to give generalizable operational advice regarding how to distinguish between long- and shortterm causes. Social scientists are trained to temporally zoom in and out, readjusting their aperture depending on the specific research project. Years or even decades of protest may be defined as short-term causes in order to explain, for example, the changing political culture in a postcolonial country. Meanwhile, years would be a rather long time horizon for explaining foreign policy changes in the Cuban Missile Crisis. The distinction between sudden and gradually operating causes therefore depends on the time horizon of the institution under study as well as the (spatio)temporal scope conditions of the particular research project. The proposed typology draws major inspiration from the work of Pierson (2003). In his typology, Pierson also emphasizes the temporal structure of variables. Yet, he disentangles the time horizons of causes and outcomes from each other. In contrast to him, I am only interested in the explanatory side and focus explicitly on the causes, not on the outcomes. Yet, combining these dimensions (source of cause, time horizon of cause, and time horizon of outcome) would result in a three-dimensional typology in which the eight corners of a cube represent the different types of change. Beyond the time horizon of the outcome, it might also be worthwhile to connect the typology with the scope of the outcome. I share the criticism of Grzymala-Busse (2011, 1286) that there is no need to assume an inherent connection between sudden causes leading automatically to large-scale change, whereas gradually working causes are assumed to produce “only”small changes. Similarly, the proposed typology can also be complemented with insightful approaches that account for the rigidity of the institutional environment to explain what type of change agent is likely to emerge (Mahoney and Thelen 2010) and what forms of change are expected to occur (Riedl and Roberts 2017; Streeck and Thelen 2005). Also, the types of explanation might be productively connected to a more nuanced discussion of concrete causal mechanisms, decomposing the involved entities and their activities (Machamer, Darden, and Craver 2000), specifying potential microfoundations (Hedström and Swedberg 1996;Tilly2001), and accounting for further important aspects of temporality (Grzymala-Busse 2011). Here, I limit the typological axes to two major constituents of a cause: its origin and its duration. By cross-tabulating these two major causal constituents, we arrive at a full typology of institutional change. While the upper left and the lower right cells are dominant in current accounts of institutional change, less attention is placed on the missing diagonal of type II and type III change. Table 2 provides an overview, already indicating the illustrative natural science metaphors and the social science examples that I discuss in the following section. THE FOUR TYPES OF INSTITUTIONAL CHANGE The following section introduces the four types of institutional change. I begin with the two most commonly discussed types of institutional change, exogenous ruptures and endogenous gradual change, before focusing on the missing diagonal of exogenous gradual change and endogenous ruptures. 1 In her excellent article, Grzymala-Busse (2011, 1277–1286) teaches us to be precise: duration should be kept separate from tempo. The former is defined as the period between start and end, whereas the latter is the average distance traveled (or change occurred) divided by the time interval. For example, short (or long) duration does not necessarily need to correlate with fast (or slow) speed. For our purposes, it is important to note that tempo extends into the effect dimension, whereas the proposed typology concentrates on the cause dimension. Explanations of Institutional Change: Reflecting on a “Missing Diagonal” 221 Exogenously Driven Ruptures (Type I Change) Exogenously driven rupture—that is, the type I change in the upper left quadrant—follows the dual model of long phases of stability that are suddenly interrupted by surprising events in which unmodeled forces intervene abruptly, making continuation of the existing rules of the game unlikely. However, the idea of “punctuated equilibrium”(Eldredge and Gould 1972) that is borrowed from paleobiology is subject to some misunderstandings. 2 In the social sciences, two distinct understandings of a punctuated equilibrium coexist in parallel, causing considerable confusion: phyletic gradualism that is best illustrated with a branching tree metaphor on one hand and the original Gould and Eldredge idea of punctuated equilibrium that follows a step function on the other hand. Clarifying this confusion helps us to better understand the different explanatory routes. Figure 1 situates the reader by showing graphically where the major differences lie. The two understandings differ in one important manner. The exogenous shock in the branching tree metaphor makes paths diverge and represents a Weberian railroad switch, whereas the step function can be understood as putting an institution on a new track. An important example for the former is the classic study by Collier and Collier (1991, 27). By using Robert Frost’s poem “The Road Not Taken”as a key metaphor, they invoke the image of a “‘branching point’from which historical development moves onto a new path”(Hall and Taylor 1996, 942). It represents a forking path. Other scholars have refined this template (Capoccia and Kelemen 2007; Collier and Munck 2017; Mahoney 2001b; Pierson 2000a; Rixen and Viola 2015), but they agree that once a critical choice is made, it forecloses other viable options and can hardly be taken back, which reflects the idea of a branching tree. One might speculate that Stephan Krasner’s(1984, 240–44) influential article led to the conceptual confusion in the discipline about what punctuated equilibrium is. He juxtaposed Gould and Eldredge’s(1972; 1977)ideaof“punctuated equilibrium”and the branching tree metaphor, implying that the one can be equated with the other. In the aftermath, branching tree metaphors and punctuated equilibria are almost always used interchangeably in the social sciences, particularly in historical neo-institutionalism. Yet, Gould and Eldredge argue exactly against such a branching tree metaphor. Branching trees, they argue, represent Darwinian evolutionary thinking. In contrast, they propose a step function as the appropriate illustration for punctuated equilibria. Instead of gradual transformations, punctuated equilibrium argues that “rapid events of speciation in isolated subpopulations”(Eldredge and Gould 1972, 110) lead to sudden and brief interruptions of long phases of morphological stability. A homeostatic equilibrium is abruptly disturbed. In contrast to the branching tree metaphor, in which “splitting, when it occurs, produces a slow and very gradual divergence of forms” (Eldredge and Gould 1972, 109), punctuated equilibrium is characterized by two mechanisms: a rapid isolating mechanism at the beginning that is then followed by local adaptation. What has largely been overlooked in the social sciences is this isolating mechanism. Gould and Eldredge emphasize that a rapid geographical dislocation (e.g., the break-up of an island) isolates a subpopulation that needs to adapt to new circumstances. It is allopatric— that is, the descendants stem from other ancestors. Yet, and this is important to note, it is not a saltational TABLE 2. A Typology of Institutional Change Time horizon of cause Short Long Source of cause Exogenous to institution Type I: exogenously driven rupture (“Punctuated equilibrium”) Roberts (2014) on party systems in Latin America after the debt crisis (following the “branching tree model”); Ikenberry (2001) on political order after great power wars (following the “step function model”) Type II: exogenous, gradual change (Geological erosion) Goldstone (1991) on demographic pressure to explain state breakdown; Hufbauer et al. (2007) on the effect of economic sanctions on authoritarian regimes Endogenous to institution Type III: endogenously driven rupture (Medical embolism or autoimmune reaction) Sartori (1976) on polarized pluralism; Eichengreen (1996) on the end of Bretton Woods Type IV: endogenous, gradual change (Radioactive decay) Thelen (2004) on skill formation in Germany; Bunce (1999)on“subversive institutions”in the Soviet Union Note: Source: Own table. 2 I would like to express my gratitude to one of the anonymous reviewers for highlighting this important point to me. It would otherwise have gone unnoticed. Johannes Gerschewski 222 theory. It does not argue with jumps in evolution but instead with dislocation that makes the identification of the concrete isolating mechanism so important (Gould and Eldredge 1993). Arguments that follow the branching tree metaphor are more common in the social sciences than the step function. A good illustration is Roberts’s(2014) study on the effects of the economic crisis on the stability of party systems in Latin America. Advancing a classic critical juncture framework (Capoccia 2015; Collier and Collier 1991,27–39; Mahoney 2001a;2001b; Lipset and Rokkan 1967), Roberts (2014, 10) argues that an “exogenous shock—the 1982 debt crisis—bankrupted developmental states and forced economic adjustment.”In an “activating critical juncture”(Riedl and Roberts 2017) antecedent conditions like the depth of the previous state-led development policy and the nature of the former party system (elitist vs. labormobilizing) predisposed differential disruptive effects on post-critical juncture party systems. In this “neoliberal critical juncture”(Roberts 2014,89–93), the change of economic models after the debt crisis was the “major mover of party system change” (Mainwaring 2016, 707). I interpret the exogenous shock of the debt crisis as an important choice moment, resulting in a forking path. In my reading, its argumentative structure follows the branching tree model. Arguments that employ the Gould/Eldredge idea of punctuated equilibrium—that is, they incorporate not a railroad switch but setting the institution on a new railroad track—are rarer. As depicted above, the exogenous shock must be so strong that it puts an institutional order in a new environment, creating an aliud. War is an appropriate candidate for such a farreaching and comprehensive shock. A landmark study in this regard is, for example, Ikenberry’s(2001) masterful analysis, After Victory. Ikenberry explains the set-up of institutional orders after great power wars such as the Napoleonic Wars 1814/15, the First and Second World Wars 1918 and 1945, and the end of FIGURE 1. Phyletic Gradualism versus Punctuated Equilibrium Phyletic gradualism (branching tree) Morphological Change Time Exogenous shock that is powerful enough to make paths diverge (“railroad switch”) Morphological Change Time Punctutated equilibrium (step function) Exogenous shock (punctuation) that is powerful enough to put institutions on "new track" Equilibrium state Isolating mechanism Note: Source: Own figure. Explanations of Institutional Change: Reflecting on a “Missing Diagonal” 223 the Cold War 1989/1990. These chaotic major postwar junctures are perceived by Ikenberry (2001,3)assuch extraordinary situations that state leaders found themselves in “unusually advantageous positions”to “remake international order.”He argues that those who won the war neither exploited their advantageous position nor abandoned the other states. Instead, they used their dominant position during these watershed moments to develop mechanisms of strategic restraint in order to build and lock in a new political order that bound together other states in a set of favorable and institutionalized postwar power relations (Ikenberry 2001,50–79). I read Ikenberry’s study as being closer to the allopatric speciation model than to phyletic gradualism. The international orders were disrupted during these great power wars, leading Ikenberry (2001, 7) to employ Katzenstein’s notion of history as a “sequence of irregular big bangs.”Astepfunction illustrates this change trajectory best. When drawing the trajectory on paper, one cannot draw its progression in one fluid motion;rather, one must lift the pencil to start anew at a different point. The distinction between the two understandings of “punctuated equilibrium”has direct methodological repercussions. The starting point for Gould and Eldredge was actually a methodological concern. The standard Darwinian argument is that all gaps in the fossil record, sooner or later, need to be closed, and if we did not yet manage to do so, then we just need to dig deeper to bring the dots closer together. In other words, if gaps cannot be closed and graded sequences be completed, then we have simply not found enough empirical evidence to prove the theory right, effectively making the theory “virtually unfalsifiable” (Eldredge and Gould 1972, 90). What we can learn from Gould and Eldredge is their fundamental insight that our theoretical expectations sometimes color our empirical perceptions and that gaps in the sequences should not automatically be interpreted as imperfections in our data. Instead, we need to acknowledge that “many breaks in the fossil record are real”(Eldredge and Gould 1972, 96). This means that, methodologically speaking, in some instances we should not overestimate continuity and gear our data collection effort towards a steady, linear, and continuous path; instead, we should take seriously the existence of breaks and discontinuities. Breaks are then turned into a legitimate and fruitful object of study. If we follow this route, then the burden of proof lies in demonstrating a social science equivalent to anisolating mechanism that explains why we observe a leap and why an institution has been put on a new track. The research perspective therefore changes, shifting focus from developmental pathways—typically entailing the analysis of critical antecedents, continuities before and after crises, and institutional legacies—to explanations of paradigmatic change—that is, institutional change so fundamental in nature that it breaks with preexisting traditions. The comprehensiveness and magnitude of warsare primecandidates for punctuated equilibria, but it can also be smaller events depending on the institution of study. Yet, the key question remains: Are we interested in continuous legacy arguments, or do we “allow”for discontinuity in our explanations? The distinction between branching trees and step functions also speaks to the long-standing discussion among historical institutionalists regarding to what extent change is necessary for making arguments about critical junctures. For example, Collier and Munck (2017) see it as a necessary component, whereas Capoccia and Kelemen (2007,352) state expressis verbis that “change is not a necessary element of a critical juncture.”If arguments follow the step function architecture, institutional change is almost inevitable. A sharp and sudden change is to be expected after the isolation sets in. However, if arguments follow the branching tree structure, this condition can be relaxed. In a critical juncture, the original path may be continued without changing direction (see also Dunning 2017). To take stock, there are two different explanatory modi of type I change that are often both misleadingly subsumed under the umbrella of “punctuated equilibria.”While the original Gould/Eldredge model of allopatric speciation resembles a step function, the social science “adaptation”of it more frequently follows the branching tree model—ironically, exactly the one that Gould and Eldredge (1972) argued against in their classic study. Branching tree models mark the divergence of paths due to an exogenous shock, highlighting continuity. In contrast, the step function model sees exogenous shocks as causing isolation from each other and offering a new beginning, so emphasizing discontinuity. Endogenous Gradual Change (Type IV Change) While it is safe to say that the critical juncture literature is dominant in explaining rapid change, type IV change dominates explanations of gradual institutional change. It emerged as a direct reaction to the explanatory void of critical juncture arguments. Instead of emphasizing punctuated equilibria, it asks how critical junctures emerge in the first place and how an institution can be changed from within. Radioactive decay is a fitting analogy from the natural sciences. Here, the driver for change lies within the chemical element itself. Compared with stable chemical elements, radioactive elements are characterized by an inherently unstable nucleus. While the number of protons per nucleus is fixed, the number of neutrons that stabilize the atomic core can vary. Neutrons offset the repulsion of positively charged protons. If there are too many or too few neutrons in relation to the optimal number of protons per nucleus, the atomic core becomes unstable and subject to radioactive decay. The period that it takes for half of the unstable atoms to undergo such radioactive decay is measured in the half-lives of the isotopes. The crucial idea that we can adopt here for the social sciences is that the inner “architecture”of the atomic cores is responsible for the radioactive decay. In other words, the potential for change is already implanted in the composition of protons and neutrons within the nuclei, Johannes Gerschewski 224 serving, therefore, as an apt analogy for endogenously caused change. Moreover, as naturally existing radioactive elements have long half-lives, they are also well suited for illustrating long time horizons and gradual forms of change. Translated to the social sciences, the inner architecture in whichthe electric repulsion of protons is offset by neutrons can be compared to binding mechanisms within institutions. Following the recent work of Capoccia (2016), those institutions in particular develop “bite” in which two mechanisms are at play. On one hand, Capoccia convincingly demonstrates that the institutionalization of cultural categories makes deviant behavior costlier. On the other hand, the allocation of power over the timing of reforms is critical because it makes it more difficult for contesting actorsto build and shift coalitions. If institutional incumbents can bind change agents and offset their repulsive energies, they remain resilient. Going beyond the crude dichotomy of winners and losers within an institution, Mahoney and Thelen (2010) suggest different types of change agents. In their stimulating work, they distinguish between subversives, insurrectionaries 3 , symbionts, and opportunists. Whereas subversives might disguise their true intentions and go undetected, gradually pushing for change, insurrectionaries openly mobilize dissent. Symbionts, in turn, rely on the preservation of the institution and might either parasitically contradict the spirit of the institution or mutualistically “derive benefit from rules they did not write”(Mahoney and Thelen 2010, 24). Finally, opportunists are characterized by ambiguous preferences, exploiting the institution for their own sake. If these changeagentscanbe “neutralized,”aninstitutionisable to defy change. Otherwise, they become the actors behind decay processes. Illustrative social science examples for type iv change are abundant. As discussed above, in critiquing the dualism of stasis and compressed moments of change, a new research agenda has emerged in recent years. One of the cornerstones of this research strand is the comparative historical analysis of Kathleen Thelen (2004) on labor skill formation regimes in Germany, Britain, the United States, and Japan. Particularly in her longitudinal study of skill formation in Germany, Thelen demonstrates that the development of vocational training in Germany can be traced back to the 1870s and evolved incrementally via feedback loops in which both labor and capital recognized the beneficial role of handicraft chambers (Handwerkskammer) that gained “parapublic authority”(Thelen 2004, 40) to organize skill formation. In her later terms, the handicraft chamber turned out to be a mutualistic symbiont. The development of German skill formation was therefore not the result of “big bangs”or critical junctures (which might have been probable given Germany’s rich history of turning points); instead, it was the more “subtle and incremental changes occurring in relatively “settled”rather than “unsettled”times”(Thelen 2004, xiii) that account for its gradual evolution. A further empirical example in which the logic of endogenous gradual change can be observed in admirable clarity is the work by Valerie Bunce (1999)onthe dissolution of the Soviet Union. The Soviet state institutions that disintegrated gradually have been characterized by Bunce as “subversive.”Although—like in the reference to radioactive decay—exogenous forces have served as catalyst, the seeds of their own demise have been already implanted in the original institutional design. The causes were to be found inside rather than outside the institutions under study (Kalyvas 1999). Exogenous Gradual Change (Type II Change) Erosion is the most common metaphor employed to describe all types of gradual processes. Not only in the social sciences but also beyond, erosion is often equated with any sort of gradual weakening. Yet, having a closer look at its geological roots, this broad understanding is not only too vague but also misleading. In geology, erosion is a physical process by which solid particles are moved, transported, and later sedimented. In general, two sets of factors need to be distinguished. On one hand, erosivity factors refer to the strength of wind and water—the exogenous factors. On the other hand, erodibility factors refer to the characteristics of the soil—that is, the vulnerability to winds or water (Julien 2010,4–27). While the structure and condition of the soil influences to what extent the sediment can be set in motion so that substance is eroded, the actual driver for change is always exogenous: wind or water that “attacks”the soil. An intuitive example from the social sciences is the effect of economic sanctions on authoritarian regimes (Hufbauer et al. 2007). Like different types of soils, authoritarian regimes differ in their vulnerability to economic sanctions. Certain erodibility factors define the robustness or porousness of the targeted authoritarian regime and influence the speed and scope of change. Yet, the cause of this form of gradual change (international sanctions) is exogenous. Despite its ubiquitous usage, clear-cut erosion processes are difficult to find in the classic social science canon. Although not being marked as such, an illustrating example is the classic book by Jack Goldstone (1991). He advances a complex argument on why states broke down in early modern Europe and Asia during the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries. I interpret Goldstone’s study as an erosion argument in which political institutions are gradually weakened over extended periods. 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