¹ Of course, this dual model of institutional development is not the only one used by historical institutionalists: important recent contributions have emphasized alternative causal models such as layering, conversion, and drift. See, for instance, Thelen, Kathleen, “How Institutions Evolve,” in Mahoney, James and Rueschemeyer, Dietrich, eds., Comparative HistoricalAnalysis in the Social Sciences (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003)Google Scholar; Schickler, Eric, Disjointed Pluralism: Institutional Innovation and the Development of the U.S. Congress (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001)Google Scholar; and Hacker, Jacob, “Privatizing Risk without Privatizing the Welfare State,” Privatizing Risk without Privatizing the Welfare State, 98 (May 2004)Google Scholar. See also Thelen, Kathleen, Union of Parts (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1991), 21–24Google Scholar; Thelen, Kathleen and Steinmo, Sven, “Historical Institutionalism in Comparative Politics,” in Steinmo, Sven et al. , Structuring Politics: Historical Institutionalism in Comparative Analysis (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 16–18Google Scholar; North, Douglass, “Five Propositions about Institutional Change,” in Knight, Jack and Sened, Itai, eds., Explaining Social Institutions (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1995), 18Google Scholar.

² These moments of fluidity are also referred to in the literature with terms such as “turning point,” “crisis,” and “unsettled times.” We will use the term “critical juncture” throughout our analysis.

³ Pierson, Paul, Politics in Time (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004), 135Google Scholar. See also Mahoney, James, “Path Dependent Explanations of Regime Change,” Studies in Comparative and International Development, 36, no. 1 (2001), 114CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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⁵ For example, Collier and Collier (fn. 4), 27; Mahoney (fn. 4), 7.

⁶ As discussed below, Mahoney (fn. 4) is a significant exception.

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¹⁰ Lipset and Rokkan (fn. 4), 37–38. While Lipset and Rokkan say that the “variety of empirical party systems” can be reduced to a “set of ordered consequences of decisions and developments” at critical junctures, their analysis is couched in a largely structural language, leaving little place for more fine-grained analysis of political decision making and meaningful choices during critical junctures; Lipset and Rokkan, 44.

¹¹ Verba, Sidney, “Sequences and Development,” in Binder, Leonard, Coleman, James S., LaPalombara, Joseph, Pye, Lucian W., Verba, Sidney, and Weiner, Myron, Crises and Sequences in Political Development (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1971), 308Google Scholar.

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¹⁸ Pierson (fn. 14).

¹⁹ Collier and Collier (fn. 4), 29. See also Dan Slater and Erica Simmons, “Informative Regress: Critical Antecedents and Historical Causation” (Paper prepared for presentation at the annual meeting of the American Political Science Association, Chicago, August 2007).

²⁰ Mahoney (fn. 4).

²¹ Mahoney, James, “Path Dependence in Historical Sociology,” Path Dependence in Historical Sociology, 29 (August 2000)Google Scholar, 513; and Mahoney (fn. 3), 113.

²² Mahoney (fn. 4), 7. For an analysis that emphasizes the heightened significance of individual actors and their decisions during moments of crisis when “system creating choices are made,” see also Gourevitch (fn. 17), 239. See also Katznelson, Ira, “Periodization and Preferences,” in Mahoney, James and Rueschemeyer, Dietrich, eds., Comparative Historical Analysis in the Social Sciences (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 270–303CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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²⁴ A notable exception to this rule is Pierson (fn. 3), whose work we discuss below.

²⁵ For example, Collier and Collier (fn. 4); and Abbott, Andrew, Time Matters (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001)Google Scholar.

²⁶ Abbott (fn. 25).

²⁷ For example, see Gould (fn. 15).

²⁸ Ball, Philip, CriticalMass (London: Arrow, 2004)Google Scholar.

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³⁰ Ebbinghaus (fn. 17), 16.

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³⁶ Some scholars employ the expression “moments,” which, even when used in a metaphorical sense, may be misleading.

³⁷ In the literature on evolution, from which much of the social science literature on institutional evolution draws inspiration, scholars who reject the notion of punctuated equilibrium emphasize precisely this point; see, for example, Dawkins, Richard, The Blind Watchmaker (New York: Norton, 1996)Google Scholar.

³⁸ Pierson (fn. 3), 92ff.

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⁴⁰ Though Pierson also categorizes causal processes in terms of the time horizon of their outcome, he recognizes that this is problematic in cases where there is a temporal separation between the cause (which takes place in the critical juncture) and the effect (which takes place at the end of the path-dependent process); see Pierson (fn. 3), 95. The distinction between the effect (outcome) to be explained and the path-dependent process that generates it is a matter of conceptualization of the effect itself and depends on the specific research question.

⁴¹ See, for example, Collier and Collier (fn. 4), 29–30; Abbott (fn. 25); Gal and Bargal (fn. 17), 437; Hogan (fn. 17).

⁴² Pierson (fn. 14).

⁴³ King et al. (fn. 8), 128–37; and Geddes, Barbara, Paradigms and Sand Castles (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2003)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also Collier, David and Mahoney, James, “Insights and Pitfalls: Selection Bias in Qualitative Research,” Insights and Pitfalls: Selection Bias in Qualitative Research, 49 (October 1996)Google Scholar.

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⁴⁷ Arthur (fn. 13,1994), 14.

⁴⁸ Paul David, “Path Dependence, Its Critics and the Quest for ‘Historical Economies’” (Manuscript, Oxford and Stanford, 2000), 10.

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⁵¹ Thelen and Steinmo (fn. 1), 17.

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⁵⁷ A “foresight” perspective is obviously necessary to identify correctly those critical junctures that did not in the end lead to change.

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⁶⁰ As mentioned above, our reference to counterfactual analysis here is more specific than simply considering them as a necessary logical part of a causal argument; see King et al. (fn. 8), 88–89. In the critical juncture framework, it is possible to reconstruct plausible counterfactual scenarios that could have had a large causal effect on outcomes.

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⁶³ Mahoney (fn. 21), 513.

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⁸⁰ The significance of such learning effects is evident in the rapidly growing literature on policy diffusion. For a recent review, see Simmons, Beth, Garrett, Geoffrey, and Dobbin, Frank, “Introduction: The International Diffusion of Liberalism,” International Organization 60, no. 4 (2006)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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⁸² One must consider the lowest probability of the outcome during rather than simply immediately prior to the critical juncture exactly because not all critical junctures result in change: considering only the probability before and after the juncture would lead analysts to ignore the criticalness of critical junctures that result in re-equilibration of the pre—critical juncture status quo.

⁸³ If CJ_y ≤ 0, then CJ was not a critical juncture with respect to outcome Y.

⁸⁴ We take the natural log of (T_x/T_x) in order to discount the effect of time. Otherwise, critical junctures occurring in the distant past would produce the highest criticalness measures, even if they had a very modest impact on the probability of the outcome.

⁸⁵ In arguments built on increasing returns and path dependence, the probability of the outcome of interest at the beginning of the path cannot equal 1, as this would deny the very logic of self-reinforcing mechanisms. Our formula captures this idea, in that if the outcome of interest happens immediately after the end of the critical juncture, the “temporal leverage” fraction would have a numerator of 0 and taking the natural log would give a result of negative infinity, rendering the CJ score meaningless.

⁸⁶ While historical arguments relied on assessments of the likelihood of various outcomes, it is obviously problematic to assign precise probabilities to predictions in historical explanations; see Weber, Max, Methodology in the Social Sciences, ed. and trans. Shils, Edward and Finch, Henry A. (New York: Free Press, 1949), 183Google Scholar.

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⁸⁸ Ziblatt (fn. 87).

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⁹¹ Listing the key players, Turner (fn. 90) maintains that “it was one of these frequent junctures in human affairs when the fates of many rested with very few” (p. 166).

⁹² If this were true, then there would be very little “critical” in the events of January 1933 in Germany: structural conditions would create formidable organized interests that would then impose certain courses of action on whoever happened to be in positions of power in an ostensibly critical phase.

⁹³ Turner (fn. 90), 168.

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⁹⁶ Article 177 gives all national courts the option of making references to the ECJ in cases hinging on EU law and obliges finalcourts of appeal to do so.

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¹⁰¹ Alter (fn. 94).

¹⁰² Direct effect (Van Genden Loos, Case 26/62, [1963] ECR1) provides that EU law creates rights for individuals that they can rely on directly within their national legal systems, whereas supremacy (Costa v ENEL, Case 6/64, [1964] ECR 585) holds that EU law takes primacy over conflicting national laws.

¹⁰³ Stone Sweet (fn. 98); and Alter (fn. 94).

¹⁰⁴ Thelen (fn. 1); and Streeck and Thelen (fn. 32).

¹⁰⁵ Pierson (fn. 14), 264.