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FIELDS, POWER, AND SOCIAL SKILL: A CRITICAL ANALYSIS OF THE NEW INSTITUTIONALISMS

Neil Fligstein

Department of Sociology University of California Berkeley, Ca. 94720,U.S.A.

Abstract

"New Institutional" Theories have proliferated across the social sciences. While they have substantial disagreements, they agree that institutions are created to produce local social orders, are social constructions, fundamentally about how powerful groups create rules of interaction and maintain unequal resource distributions, and yet, once in existence, both constrain and enable actors in subsequent institution building. I present a critique of these theories that focuses on their inadequate attention to the role of social power and actors in the creation of institutions. An alternative view of the dynamics of institutions is sketched out

based on a more sociological conception of rules, resources, and social skill.

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Introduction

There has been increased interest for almost 20 years across the social sciences in explaining how social institutions (defined as rules that produce social interaction) come into existence, remain stable, and are transformed (for some examples, see in political science, March and Olsen, 1989; Steinmo, et. al., 1992; Cox and McCubbins, 1993; Krehbiel, 1991; Shepsle, 1989; in sociology, Meyer and Rowan, 1977; Scott, 1995; Scott and Meyer, 1983; Powell and DiMaggio, 1991; Fligstein, 1990; Dobbin, 1994; and in economics, Simon, 1957; Williamson, 1985; North, 1990; Milgrom and Roberts, 1992; Jensen and Meckling, 1974; Arthur, 1988).¹

There is substantial disagreement both within and across disciplines over almost all facets of this problem. Scholars disagree about what is meant by institutions. Some see them as consciously constructed rules or laws, others as norms (ie. collectively held informal rules that are enforced by group sanctions), and still others, as taken for granted meanings (Scott, 1995,

¹  I apologize in advance for any obvious omissions of scholarship in what has become a voluminous literature.