210141 SE M7 b: State Activity, Policy and Governance Analyses: (2012W)

Over the last two decades, a broad neoinstitutionalist literature in comparative politics and political economy has demonstrated that political institutions critically affect political behavior, political processes, and policy outputs. Most studies conceptualize institutions as stable and exogenous constraints on actor behavior, i.e. as independent variables explaining behavior and outputs. More recently, however, scholars have turned increased attention to the question of how institutions are designed and changed, i.e. treat institutions as a dependent variable.
This seminar covers this literature in order to understand why political institutions change over time. Theoretically, we discuss rational choice institutionalism and historical institutionalism as alternative but often complementary perspectives. The main emphasis is on rationalist theories of institutional design. This perspective conceptualizes changes in institutional rules as a strategy of political actors to achieve their substantive interests in political competition. Empirically, the seminar covers changes in the electoral system, the organization of parliaments, federalism, direct democracy, and the role of constitutional courts. The seminar focuses on institutional change in modern, especially European democracies.