Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-8bhkd Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-04T21:37:52.183Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Practices of Dynamic Order

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 May 2018

Nicolas Jabko  and
Adam Sheingate
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

In accounting for the endurance of dysfunctional institutions, scholars often highlight the importance of path dependence or incremental change. Yet this fails to capture the creativity that actors deploy to reproduce order, particularly in times of crisis. We propose the concept of dynamic order, rooted in pragmatist theory, as an alternative way to think about institutional durability. Powerful actors reproduce order through creative adjustments to rules and routines that channel action into predictable and controllable behavior. We illustrate this dynamic with examples from the European Union and the United States. In response to the crisis of the Eurozone, EU and state officials invented new procedures that strengthened European governance at the very moment many questioned whether the euro could survive. Likewise, in the United States, public officials responded to social movements and street protests against racism and police brutality by creatively channeling these grievances into judicial proceedings and procedures controlled by the state. By focusing on how elite actors regenerate order in times of crises, our analysis enhances the conceptual toolkit currently available to the scholars of institutions.

Type
Article
Information
Perspectives on Politics , Volume 16 , Issue 2 , June 2018 , pp. 312 - 327
Copyright
Copyright © American Political Science Association 2018 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Abers, Rebecca N. and Keck, Margaret E.. 2013. Practical Authority: Agency and Institutional Change in Brazilian Water Politics. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Ansell, Chistopher K. 2011. Pragmatist Democracy: Evolutionary Learning as Public Philosophy. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Ansell, Chris, Boin, Arjen, and Farjoun, Moshe. 2015. “Dynamic Conservatism: How Institutions Change to Remain the Same.” In Institutions and Ideals: Philip Selznick’s Legacy for Organizational Studies, ed. Kraatz, Matthew S.. Bingley, UK: Emerald Group Publishing Limited.Google Scholar
Austin, J. L. 1962. How to Do Things with Words. The Williams James Lectures Delivered at Harvard University in 1955. Oxford, UK: Clarendon Press.Google Scholar
Azari, Julia and Smith, Jennifer. 2012. “Unwritten Rules: Informal institutions in Established Democracies.” Perspectives on Politics 10(1): 37–55.Google Scholar
Baltimore Sun. n.d.a. “Timeline: Freddie Gray’s Arrest, Death and the aftermath.” http://data.baltimoresun.com/news/freddie-gray/; accessed November 3, 2017.Google Scholar
Baltimore Sun. n.d.b. “Mayor Rawlings-Blake Calls for Peaceful Protests.” http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/maryland/politics/blog/83380568-132.html; accessed December 5, 2017.Google Scholar
Beckett, Katherine and Murakawa, Naomi. 2012. “Mapping the Shadow Carceral State: Toward an Institutionally Capacious Approach to Punishment.” Theoretical Criminology 16(2): 221–44.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Berk, Gerald and Galvan, Dennis C.. 2013. “Processes of Creative Syncretism: Experiential Origins of Institutional Order and Change.” In Political Creativity: Reconfiguring Institutional Order and Change, ed. Berk, Gerald, Galvan, Dennis C., and Hattam, Victoria. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.Google Scholar
Berk, Gerald and Galvan, Dennis C.. 2015. “How to Study Institutions as Relational Process” Presented at “Making Social Science Pragmatic,” Eugene, OR, May 22–23.Google Scholar
Berk, Gerald, Galvan, Dennis C., and Hattam, Victoria. 2013. “Conclusion: An Invitation to Political Creativity.” In Political Creativity: Reconfiguring Institutional Order and Change, ed. Berk, Gerald, Galvan, Dennis C., and Hattam, Victoria. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.Google Scholar
Bernhard, Michael. 2015. “Chronic Instability and the Limits of Path Dependence.” Perspectives on Politics 13(4): 976–91.Google Scholar
Bernstein, Richard J. 2010. The Pragmatic Turn. Cambridge: Polity Press.Google Scholar
Blyth, Mark. 2013. Austerity: The History of a Dangerous Idea. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Blyth, Mark, Helgadóttir, Oddný, and Kring, William. 2016. “Ideas and Historical Institutionalism.” In The Oxford Handbook of Historical Institutionalism, ed. Fioretos, Orfeo, Falleti, Tulia G., Sheingate, Adam. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Bourdieu, Pierre. 1977. Outline of a Theory of Practice. New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Bowie, Liz and Dresser, Michael. 2015. “Legal Experts’ Opinions Divided.” Baltimore Sun, May 2, A11.Google Scholar
Broadwater, Luke. 2015. “Mayor: City Not Ready for Riot,” Baltimore Sun, July 29, A1.Google Scholar
Brunnermeier, Markus K., James, Harold, and Landau, Jean-Pierre. 2016. The Euro and the Battle of Ideas. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Capoccia, Giovanni and Kelemen, Daniel R.. 2007. “The Study of Critical Junctures. Theory, Narrative and Counterfactuals in Institutional Analysis.” World Politics 59(3): 341–69.Google Scholar
Chambers, Samuel A. 2014. Bearing Society in Mind: Theories and Politics of the Social Formation. London: Rowman & Littlefield International.Google Scholar
Collier, Ruth Berins and Collier, David. 1991. Shaping the Political Arena: Critical Junctures, the Labor Movement, and Regime Dynamics in Latin America. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Commons, John R. 1995 [1924]. Legal Foundations of Capitalism. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers.Google Scholar
Connolly, William. 2008. Capitalism and Christianity, American Style. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Cramer, Katherine J. 2016. The Politics of Resentment: Rural Consciousness in Wisconsin and the Rise of Scott Walker. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Crozier, Michel J., Huntington, Samuel P., and Watanuki, Joho. 1975. The Crisis of Democracy. New York: New York University Press.Google Scholar
Dewey, John. 1929. Experience and Nature. New York: Norton.Google Scholar
Dewey, John. 1922. Human Nature and Conduct: An Introduction to Social Psychology. New York: H. Holt and company.Google Scholar
Dewey, John. 1981 [1927]. “The Public and Its Problems.” In The Later Works, 1925–1953, Volume 2, ed. Ann Boydston, Jo. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press.Google Scholar
Draghi, Mario. 2012. “Speech by Mario Draghi, President of the European Central Bank at the Global Investment Conference in London 26 July 2012.” https://www.ecb.europa.eu/press/key/date/2012/html/sp120726.en.html; accessed December 5, 2017.Google Scholar
Edin, Kathryn J. and Luke Shaefer, H.. 2016. $2.00 a Day: Living on Almost Nothing in America. Boston, MA: Mariner Books.Google Scholar
Eligon, John and Williams, Timothy. 2015. “Mayor Wants Justice Dept. to Investigate in Baltimore.” New York Times, May 7, A15.Google Scholar
Epp, Charles R., Maynard-Moody, Steven, and Haider-Markel, Donald P.. 2014. Pulled Over: How Police Stops Define Race and Citizenship. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
European Council. 2010a. “Conclusions.”. March 26, Brussels.Google Scholar
European Council. 2010b. Strengthening Economic Governance in the EU: Report of the Task Force to the European Council. October 21, Brussels.Google Scholar
Euro Summit. 2015. Euro Summit Statement. SN 4070/15. July 12, Brussels.Google Scholar
Fenton, Justin, Wenger, Yvonne, and Campbell, Colin. 2015. “After Protests, Baltimore Curfew Meets Resistance.” Baltimore Sun, April 29. http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/maryland/baltimore-city/bs-md-ci-protest-curfew-20150427-story.html; accessed December 5, 2017.Google Scholar
Follesdal, Andrew and Hix, Simon. 2006. “Why There is a Democratic Deficit in the European Union.” Journal of Common Market Studies 44(3): 533–62.Google Scholar
Gerstle, Gary. 2009. “The Resilient Power of the States across the Long Nineteenth Century.” In The Unsustainable American State, ed. Jacobs, Lawrence R. and King, Desmond S.. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Glaude, Eddie S. 2008. In a Shade of Blue: Pragmatism and the Politics of Black America. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Glaude, Eddie S. 2016. Democracy in Black: How Race Still Enslaves the American Soul. New York: Crown Publishers.Google Scholar
Gocaj, Ledina and Meunier, Sophie. 2013. “Time Will Tell: The EFSF, the ESM, and the Euro Crisis.” European Integration 35(3): 239–53.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Goffman, Alice. 2014. On the Run: Fugitive Life in an American City. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gottschalk, Marie. 2014. Caught: The Prison State and the Lockdown of American Politics. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Greif, Avner and Laitin, David D.. 2004. “A Theory of Endogenous Institutional Change.” American Political science Review 98(4): 633–52Google Scholar
Habermas, Jürgen. 1975. Legitimation Crisis. Boston: Beacon Press.Google Scholar
Habermas, Jürgen. 2012. The Crisis of the European Union: A Response. Cambridge: Polity Press.Google Scholar
Hall, Peter A. 1993. “Policy Paradigms, Social Learning, and the State: The Case of Economic Policymaking in Britain.” Comparative Politics 25(3): 275–96.Google Scholar
Hall, Peter A. 2013. “Varieties of Capitalism and the Euro Crisis.” West European Politics 37(6): 1223–43.Google Scholar
Helmke, Gretchen and Levitsky, Steven. 2006. “Introduction.” In Informal Institutions and Democracy: Lessons from Latin America, ed. Helmke, Gretchen and Levitsky, Steven. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.Google Scholar
Herrigel, Gary. 2008. “Roles and Rules: Ambiguity, Experimentation and New Forms of Stakeholderism in Germany”. Industrielle Beziehungen 15(2): 111–32.Google Scholar
James, William. 1950 [1890]. The Principles of Psychology. New York: Dover Publications.Google Scholar
James, William. 1979 [1890]. The Will to Believe and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Jones, Erik, Daniel Kelemen, R., and Meunier, Sophie. 2016. “Failing Forward? The Euro Crisis and the Incomplete Nature of European Integration.” Comparative Political Studies 49(7): 1–25.Google Scholar
Juncker, Jean-Claude. 2015. “State of the Union 2015: Time for Honesty, Unity, and Solidarity.” Strasbourg, September 9. http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_SPEECH-15-5614_en.htm; accessed December 5, 2017.Google Scholar
Juncker, Jean-Claude. 2016. “Speech by President Jean-Claude Juncker at the Annual General Meeting of the Hellenic Federation of Enterprises.” Athens, June 21. http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_SPEECH-16-2293_en.htm; accessed December 5, 2017.Google Scholar
Katznelson, Ira. 2013. Fear Itself: The New Deal and the Origins of Our Time. New York: Liveright Publishing Corporation.Google Scholar
Keeler, John T. S. 1993. “Opening the Window for Reform: Mandates, Crises, and Extraordinary Policymaking.” Comparative Political Studies 25(4): 433–86.Google Scholar
King, Desmond and Smith, Rogers. 2005. “Racial Orders in American Political Development.” American Political Science Review 99(1): 75–92.Google Scholar
Kingdon, John. 1984. Agendas, Alternatives, and Public Policies. Boston: Little Brown.Google Scholar
Kreuder-Sonnen, C. 2016. “Beyond Integration Theory: The (Anti-)Constitutional Dimension of European Crisis Governance.” Journal of Common Market Studies 54(6): 1350–66.Google Scholar
Krugman, Paul. 2011. “Killing the Euro.” New York Times, December 1, A39.Google Scholar
Lawrence, Thomas B., Suddaby, Roy, and Leca, Bernard, eds. 2009. Institutional Work: Actors and Agency in Institutional Studies of Organizations. New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Lampedusa, Giuseppe di. 2008 [1960]. The Leopard. New York: Pantheon.Google Scholar
Lerman, Amy E. and Weaver, Vesla M.. 2014. Arresting Citizenship: The Democratic Consequences of American Crime Control. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Lieberman, Robert C. 1998. Shifting the Color Line: Race and the American Welfare State. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Livingston, Alexander. 2017. “Between Means and Ends: Reconstructing Coercion in Dewey’s Democratic Theory.” American Political Science Review 111(3): 522–34.Google Scholar
Mahoney, James and Thelen, Kathleen. 2010. “A Theory of Gradual Institutional Change.” In Explaining Institutional Change: Ambiguity, Agency, and Power, ed. Mahoney, James and Thelen, Kathleen. New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Menon, Anand and Salter, John-Paul. 2016. “Brexit: Initial Reflections.” International Affairs 92(6): 1297–318Google Scholar
Merkel, Angela. 2011. “Regierungserklärung von Kanzlerin Merkel zum Europäischen Rat und zum Eurogipfel.” http://www.bundesregierung.de/ContentArchiv/DE/Archiv17/Regierungserklaerung/2011/2011-10-27-merkel-eu-gipfel.html; accessed December 5, 2017.Google Scholar
Murakawa, Naomi. 2014. The First Civil Right: How Liberals Built Prison America. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Nicolaidis, Kalypso and Howse, Robert. eds. 2001. The Federal Vision: Legitimacy and Levels of Governance in the United States and the European Union. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
North, Douglass. 1990. Institutions, Institutional Change, and Economic Performance. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Novak, William J. 1996. The People’s Welfare: Law and Regulation in Nineteenth-Century America. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.Google Scholar
Novak, William J. 2008. “The Myth of the ‘Weak’ American State.” American Historical Review 113(3): 752–72.Google Scholar
Onoma, Ato Kwamena. 2013. “Animating Institutional Skeletons: The Contributions of Subaltern Resistance to the Reinforcement of Land Boards in Botswana.” In Political Creativity: Reconfiguring Institutional Order and Change, ed. Berk, Gerald, Galvan, Dennis C., and Hattam, Victoria. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.Google Scholar
Orren, Karen and Skowronek, Stephen. 2004. The Search for American Political Development. New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Parsons, Craig and Matthijs, Matthias. 2015. “European Integration Past, Present and Future: Moving Forward through Crises?” In The Future of the Euro, ed. Matthijs, Matthias and Blyth, Mark. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Pierson, Paul. 1996. “The Path to European Integration: A Historical Institutionalist Analysis.” Comparative Political Studies 29(2): 123–63.Google Scholar
Pierson, Paul. 2000. “Increasing Returns, Path Dependence, and the Study of Politics.” American Political Science Review 94(2): 251–67.Google Scholar
Pierson, Paul. 2004. Politics in Time: History, Institutions, and Social Analysis. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Pouliot, Vincent. 2008. “The Logic of Practicality: A Theory of Practice of Security Communities.” International Organization 62(2): 257–88.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rector, Kevin. 2016. “Prosecutors conclude the Gray prosecutions with zero convictions.” Baltimore Sun, July 28, A1.Google Scholar
Rodgers, Daniel T. 2011. Age of Fracture. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Sabel, Charles F. and Zeitlin, Jonathan, eds. 2010. Experimentalist Governance in the European Union: Towards a New Architecture. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Schickler, Eric. 2001. Disjointed Pluralism: Institutional Innovation and the Development of the U.S. Congress. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Selznick, Philip. 1957. Leadership in Administration: A Sociological Interpretation. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Shusterman, Richard. 1999. “Bourdieu and Anglo-American Philosophy.” In Bourdieu: A Critical Reader, ed. Shusterman, Richard. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishers.Google Scholar
Skowronek, Stephen. 1982. Building a New American State: The Expansion of National Administrative Capacities, 1877–1920. New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Skowronek, Stephen. 1997. The Politics Presidents Make: Leadership from John Adams to Bill Clinton. Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Skowronek, Stephen. 2009. “Taking Stock.” In The Unsustainable American State, ed. Jacobs, Lawrence R. and King, Desmond S.. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Slater, Daniel. 2013. “Democratic Careening.” World Politics 65(4): 729–63.Google Scholar
Smith, Rogers M. 2014. “Ideas and the Spiral of Politics: The Place of American Political Thought in American Political Development.” American Political Thought 3(1): 126–36.Google Scholar
Soss, Joe, Fording, Richard C., and Schram, Sanford. 2011. Disciplining the Poor: Neoliberal Paternalism and the Persistent Power of Race. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Spiegel Online. 2012. “Merkel Vows ‘No Bonds as Long as I Live’.” June 27.. http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/chancellor-merkel-vows-no-euro-bonds-as-long-as-she-lives-a-841163.html; accessed December 5, 2017.Google Scholar
Stinson, Philip M. 2017. “Police Shootings: What We Know and What We Don’t Know.” Criminal Justice Faculty Publications 78. http://scholarworks.bgsu.edu/crim_just_pub/78; accessed December 5, 2017.Google Scholar
Stolberg, Sheryl Gay and Blinder, Alan. 2015. “A Rookie Prosecutor Takes a Stand and Surprises a Troubled City.” New York Times, May 1, A1.Google Scholar
Streeck, Wolfgang and Thelen, Kathleen. 2005. “Introduction: Institutional Change in Advanced Political Economies.” In Beyond Continuity: Institutional Change in Advanced Political Economies, ed. Streeck, Wolfgang and Thelen, Kathleen. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Thelen, Kathleen. 2010. “Beyond Comparative Statics: Historical Institutional Approaches to Stability and Change in the Political Economy of Labor.” In The Oxford Handbook of Comparative Institutional Analysis, ed. Morgan, Glenn, Campbell, John L., Crouch, Colin, Pedersen, Ove Kaj, and Whitley, Richard. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
U.S. Department of Justice. n.d. “An Interactive Guide to the Civil Rights Division’s Police Reforms.” https://www.justice.gov/crt/page/file/922456/download; acessed July 18, 2017.Google Scholar
U.S. Department of Justice. 2016. Investigation of the Baltimore City Police Department. https://www.justice.gov/crt/file/883296/download; accessed July 18, 2017.Google Scholar
U.S. Supreme Court. 1989. Graham v. Connor. 490 U.S. 386.Google Scholar
Verdun, Amy. 2015. “A Historical Institutionalist Explanation of the EU’s Responses to the Euro Area Financial Crisis.” Journal of European Public Policy 22(2): 219–237.Google Scholar
Victor, Daniel. 2017. “Baltimore Will Get Overhaul of Police.” New York Times, April 8, A18.Google Scholar
Washington Post. n.d. “Fatal Force.” https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/national/police-shootings-2017/; accessed November 3, 2017.Google Scholar
Weir, Margaret. 2005. “States, Race, and the Decline of New Deal Liberalism.” Studies in American Political Development 19(2): 157–72.Google Scholar