"While the language may be lovely and the reasoning just, the ideas themselves may prove trivial." -Lu Chi (from Wen Fu)

Writing Prizes:
Winning Essays

Three Generations Prize for Writing in the Social Sciences

"Institutionalism: A New Paradigm for the Social Sciences?"
Sonal Khullar '00

I. What is institutionalism?
Institutionalism offers a multi-dimensional theory of social science that borrows heavily from existing liberal / individualist and cultural approaches to social organization. But are these borrowings so great as to render the theory itself a cultural or liberal explanation under a different label? Is it meaningful to distinguish an institutionalist pradigm? In this paper, I shall argue that although institutionalism may employ some of the tools or premises of cultural and liberal arguments, its conclusions are quite different. Indeed, institutionalism arises from a critique of these existing approaches and adapts them to form a new paradigm -- a complex hybrid of what Peter Hall and Rosemary Taylor have labeled "the calculus approach" and "the cultural approach". First of all, it is important to establish that institutionalism is far from a unified theory, but rather a broad label applied to quite divergent modes of social analysis. These modes may be sub-divided into two basic types: rational-choice and historical / sociological. Both grapple with the question of how institutions, broadly defined to include formal or informal rules or procedures in a society, influence human behavior and mediate between human interests. The common denominator lies in their consideration of institutional actors as independent and the belief that collective actions cannot be explained by individual motivations. Beyond that, however, their assumptions about individual behavior and their emphases on calculus / cultural approaches result in radically different conclusions about institutional origions, stability and the proces of changes.

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II. Rational Choice Institutionalism and its Critique of Neoclassical Theory

III. Historical Institutionalism and its Critique of Rational Choice

IV. The Similaritiestoand the Divergence from Cultural Theory

V. The Value of Institutionalism

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• Lynne Viti and Wini Wood
• Wellesley College Writing Program
• Created by: Karyn Lu '01
• Date Created: June 29, 2000
• Expires: July 31, 2009

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