week1_Kelemtrans_Pengantar

• Institutions as contextual structure
Historical approach
– Institutions ossify overtime and shape the actors’ behavior in the long run
– Cross-national/regional comparisons
• Institutions are integrated in politics
– Asymmetric power relations: institutions distribute power unevenly across social groups,
– Institutions are selective: it gives disproportionate access to actors in the decisionmaking
process
– Conflicts are important selection mechanism
• Institutions as historical context underlying results of action
– Distinctive outcomes: the same collective action will generate different results in
different places, their effect will be mediated by institutions as the contextual features
of a given situation which are often inherited from the past
– Path dependence: institutions are seen as relatively persistent features of the historical
landscape and one of the central factors pushing historical development along a set of
“paths” (trajectories)
– Unintended consequences: institutions are historically given, affect behavior
inefficiently, often condition actors to behave unintentionally