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New Institutional Behavioralism (SPS-REIMM-BEH-24)

SPS-REIMM-BEH-24

Purpose

March and Olsen’s pathbreaking 1984 article, “The New Institutionalism,” launched an institutionalist wave in political science as well as in political sociology.  Nearly forty years later, we are in the midst of a behavioralist wave.  The question for us now is whether this will be a reverse wave or a wave forward that unites the insights of the institutionalist and behavioralist perspectives.  This seminar will take stock of where we are on a meta-theoretical level, drawing both on classical social thought and on recent empirical applications to argue for the great potential inherent in synthesizing these approaches.

The aim of the class is three-fold.  One is to familiarize students with foundational classic texts as well as recent publications in sociology and political science that probe the relationship between institutions and social and political behaviour. The second is to help students develop their own research projects by encouraging them to see it through the lenes of institutionalism and behaviouralism. Third, where appropriate, we will discuss the differences, advantages and disadvantages of institutionalist versus behavioralist approaches to social and political phenomena and will seek to bridge these in a new synthesis.

For each session (starting with session 2), we ask students to post a short memo about the readings (or—especially interesting—the relationship amongst the readings). It would be very helpful to receive these by late Sunday night or early Monday morning, as these memos will guide our discussion in the next day’s class and are fundamental for a fruitful discussion of the materials. Final deadline for the memos: 12:00. noon on the Monday of the class.
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