Institutional Th eory 69
- Institutionalism, working primarily from the political economies and
rational choice perspectives (Eggertsson 1990; Furubotn and Richter
1984, 1993; Downs 1967; Tullock 1965; Moe 1980, 1990; Bendor, Moe,
and Shotts 2001)
Institutional scholars working from these several perspectives use the full
range of social science methodologies as well as assumption-based deductive
modeling. Since 1990, this scholarship has become more iterative, layered, and
cumulative. More importantly, scholars now working from one or more of these
perspectives are much better informed than in the past regarding the work of
others who study institutions from their own perspective and from that of others.
Th ere are many splendid examples of cumulative institutional scholarship,
such as the LaPorte et al. series on high-reliability systems; the Milward and Pro-
van series on the hollow state and contract regimes; the Meier et al. series on pol-
icy outcomes in education structures; the series by the Ostroms and others on the
commons; empirical testing of the Tiebout fragmentation thesis; the series on the
diff usion of institutional innovation; and the long series of work on garbage can
theory and the recent to-and-fro on that subject. Th ere are many other examples,
and all are good signs for the development of institutional theory. In this chapter,
we review several of these bodies of work to illustrate the scope and characteris-
tics of contemporary institutional theory.
Post-Weberian bureaucratic study is more scientifi c and rigorous, more nu-
anced, and much stronger theoretically than ever before. To be sure, there are
institutionalists working from particular perspectives who claim the theoretical
high ground and, in doing so, suggest that those working from other perspectives
have less to contribute to institutional theory or that their perspective is institu-
tional theory. And then there are the fads and fashions in perspectives and meth-
odology: Academic journals, scholarly presses, and boards of editors attempt to
judge these claims and sort through submitted research manuscripts for the best
scholarship. Such is the nature of scholars and scholarship.
In the context of the fragmented and disarticulated state, institutional theory
is especially salient (Frederickson 1999a). For example, in the so-called hollow
state, with its extended contract and subcontract regimes, the characteristics of
loose or tight interinstitutional coupling are as important as the bureaucratic fea-
tures of each of the coupled institutions (Milward and Provan 2000b). Proba-
bly many more persons do “public” work by or through contracts than there are
persons in the formal jurisdiction of bureaucracies. Th e institutional structures
and behavior of these “shadow bureaucracies” are at the center of modern insti-
tutional theory and could be described as institutional theory’s response to the
fragmented and disarticulated state (Light 1999).
Institution theory captures and comprehends the rather long series of schol-
arship on coproduction, multiple stakeholders, public-private partnerships, pri-
vatization and contracting, and the increasingly fuzzy distinctions between things