After the students’ riots in the Western world, combined with protests againstthe Vietnam war, a new wave of crisis-of-institutions theories swept over Western
democracies. In Germany sociologists, such as Schelsky ( 1973 , 21 ), suspected that a
‘‘revolutionary march through the institutions’’ might undermine the system. No
systems change happened. The only long-term consequence was that former
student rebels in 1998 entered the federal government. Germany, as a country of
conservative institutional immobilism, all of a sudden became the ‘‘Mecca’’ for a
new institution, the ecological ‘‘Green Party.’’
In France the sociologist Michel Crozier ( 1970 ) came to rather far-reaching
conclusions with his fear that a society is in danger where institutions block each
other and lead to non-decision. Under the temporary pressure of the students’
rebellion in 1968 , the historical fear sprang up again: that French systems proved to
be unable to reform their institutions. The traumatic inspiration from French
history which dooms the country to develop by periodical revolutionary systems
changes led to a premature prognosis. The French Fifth Republic survived, though
de Gaulle withdrew earlier than expected, whereas the Italian system collapsed, but
at a time in the early 1990 s when the storms of para-revolutionary unrest had
calmed down. There was a lot of theory building on a second Italian Republic, but
the changes of the system hardly justiWed speaking of an institutional revolution.
The party system was the only institution which was substantially aVected by the
institutional crisis of the system. The ‘‘new Republic’’ proved to be the ‘‘old
Republic.’’ The syndicalist enthusiasm for new social movements without bureau-
cratic structures which endangered established institutions from 1968 was met
by new institutional arrangements of the old institutions. ‘‘Neocorporatism’’ in
northern Europe had to explain why regimes did not collapse in a crisis of
institutions. From 1985 to about 1995 no book on the relationship between state
and society was successful unless it contained the catchphrase ‘‘neocorporatism.’’
Ten years later no book could be sold if it still stuck to this paradigm.
Neocorporatism has withered away under the glare of neoliberalism. Together
with the term ‘‘ungovernability’’ for which it was meant by Schmitter to serve as
a remedy, neocorporatism showed again how short-lived theoretical fashions are—
especially in the realm of institutions which invite, more than other subjects,
simplistic everyday evidence in the style of theorizing.
3 Conclusion
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Institutions develop less quickly than theories on institutions. ‘‘Historical institu-
tionalism’’ has demonstrated that institutional traditions are not easy to change.
Institutions which have lost their former justiWcation, such as certain ministries or
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