Abstract
Historical institutionalism (HI) has a special role in neo-institutionalism, connecting the discipline with the older tradition of institutionalism through an emphasis on history and a system/structural perspective. For all previous institutionalisms, the central theoretical problem tackled was the institutions’ static nature, while empirical problems were seen only as associated with ‘good governance’. New institutionalism differed from previous institutionalism studies in bringing history to the heart of social processes via unprecedented theoretical frameworks. It supplied the idea of historical-institutional contingencies and drew questions of power into the foreground of historical enquiry. This chapter takes us out into the theoretical fields of HI to till their soil for reconstructing its fundamental premises: what is its explanatory framework, how does it approach institutions, and what is the role of history in this branch of new institutionalism?
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- 1.
The assertion that classical structural sociology tends to render actors as over-socialised dopes—or ‘automatons’, as Blyth (1997: 245) expressed it—seems farfetched in light of Durkheim’s explanation of an ‘intellectual operation’ performed between the social representation and the execution of the act (2005 [1897]: 79). This was to point out that social causes should not be confused for pure imitation of action between people: people make judgement calls.
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In this sense, the euro area is a unique exception. Only the European Central Bank (ECB) is allowed to issue currency for this set of 19 European countries, which leaves little function for their national central banks. On the other hand, all of the ‘Eurozone’ central banks used to issue currency, and the title ‘central bank’ has remained, irrespective of the change in functions. The ECB, its peculiarities, related discontent, and its relationship to the euro area are discussed well elsewhere (e.g., Blyth, 2015; Lapavitsas & Kouvélakis, 2012; Mitchell, 2015).
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Herranen, O. (2022). Historical Institutions. In: The Invisible Order. Palgrave Studies in Relational Sociology. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-16481-1_4
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