Session Abstract: Conceptualizing Institutional Stabilization

Paola Castano, University of Exeter
Andreas Glaeser, University of Chicago

The concept of institutions is both fundamental and multidimensional in the social sciences. Amidst its various conceptualizations, there is a shared puzzle in studies of institutions: What constitutes stabilization in processes of institution formation? The stabilization puzzle requires a detailed examination of the available repertoires to conceptualize institutions, along with an identification of the modalities of empirical and theoretical analysis to account for moments of closure in institution formation. This examination has the potential to recast the structure-agency and process-mechanism dichotomies in fresh ways. In this panel we want to put forward an understanding of institutions as formed and maintained in interwoven activities among changing sets of actors. From there, four questions come into focus. First, how is it that institutions can stabilize as identifiably quasi-objects from the perspective of some actors? Second, how can actors innovate to come up with new institutional arrangements? Third, how is it possible that, through and after innovations, institutions maintain recognizable forms in time? And, fourth, what is the role of natural processes typically taken to lie outside of the purview of social scientific analysis? The papers in this panel address these questions from different empirical entry points and theoretical traditions in search for both common ground and seemingly unbridgeable differences.

No extended abstract or paper available

 Presented in Session 29. Conceptualizing Institutional Stabilization