Race and Historical Institutionalism

Race and Historical Institutionalism

Introduction

Historical institutionalism is a broad field of study, which falls under the field of political science. The essay focuses on the subfield of political science, “Historical Institutionalism”, which is different from rational institutionalism and other variations of Institutionalists study. The essay also includes discussion on the concept of “racism” in context of historical institutionalism.

Historical Institutionalism

Historical institutionalism is the study focused on the explanation and understanding of real world political outcomes. Historical Institutionalists are primarily interested in clarifying the outcomes (such as, why racism was a major concern in USA, in comparison to European countries? or why some countries provide equal opportunities, while other don't?). Once finding are attained, they proceed to provide different reasons for different findings.

Five Leading Books and/or Articles Historical Institutionalism

Sven Steinmo, in his article “The New Institutionalism” describes the historical institutionalism in context of change as; one of the major characteristic of institution is that it does not change easily. According to Rational Choice Institutionalists, institutional equilibrium is a norm. Furthermore, rules are stable and politicians maximize these self interests through these rules, this is a normal state of politics. Once these actors learn rules, they alter their strategies resulting in an institutional equilibrium. Players do not like change, and change occurs as a result of external shock. On the other hand, historical Institutionalists tend to understand results at single point in time as an outcome of convergence of various factors. HIs also support the notion that change is a result of dramatic shocks. HI do not search for equilibrium and inquire in terms of process tracing. In terms of biology, HIs try to understand why and how various organisms have evolved, why some of them fail, and other flourish.

Sven Steinmo, in his book “The Evolution of Modern States: Sweden, Japan, and the United States” shed light on different variations of institutionalism. According to Sven, there are a number of ways of dividing the new institutionalists into competing factions. The most common is to distinguish between a rational choice institutionalism, a sociological institutionalism, and a historical institutionalism. These different varieties of institutional theory suggest different answers to questions about the nature of institutions, how institutions influence behavior, and how institutions change.

According to Guy Peters (pp.77), historical institutionalism is more difficult to explain, in comparison to other variations of institutionalism. If we look for the historical institutionalist view of the relation of ...