Question

What is the basic approach of "New Institutionalism" (also aka as neoinstitutionalism)

Answer 1

NEW INSTITUTIONALISM or NEO INSTITUTIONALISM is a school of thought focused on developing a sociological view of institutions—the way they interact and how they affect society. It provides a way of viewing institutions outside of the traditional views of economics by explaining why and how institutions emerge in a certain way within a given context. This institutional view argues that institutions have developed to become similar across organizations even though they evolved in different ways, and has studied how institutions shape the behavior of actors (i.e. people, organizations, and governments).

Neo-Institutionalism is a methodological approach in the study of political science, economics, organizational behaviour, and sociology in the United States that explores how institutional structures, rules, norms, and cultures constrain the choices and actions of individuals when they are part of a political institution. Such methodology became prominent in the1980s among scholars of U.S. politics. That so-called new institutionalism combined the interests of traditionalist scholars, who focused on studying formal institutional rules and structures, with behavioralistscholars, who examined the actions of individual political actors.

THE BASIC APPROACH

The New Institutionalism combines the interests of traditionalist scholars in studying formal institutional rules and structures with the focus of behavioralist scholars on examining the actions of individual political actors. The new institutionalism thus explores how institutional structures, rules, norms, and cultures constrain the choices and actions of individuals when they are part of a political institution.

Two interrelated characteristics differentiate this New Institutionalism from the “old” one. First, the new institutionalism is analytic in character, not descriptive; it wants to explain things, not just describe them. Second, it does not seek to understand institutions as such but, rather, to understand the role(s) they play in the production of social phenomena (such as public policies, economic development, democracy, and so on).

New institutionalism postulates that institutions operate in an open environment consisting of other institutions, called the institutional environment. Every institution is influenced by the broader environment (or institutional peer pressure). In this environment the main goal of organizations is to survive and gain legitimacy. In order to do so, they need to do more than succeed economically, they need to establish legitimacy within the world of institutions.

Much of the research within new institutionalism deals with the pervasive influence of institutions on human behavior through rules, norms, and other frameworks. Previous theories held that institutions can influence individuals to act in one of two ways: they can cause individuals within institutions to maximize benefits (regulative institutions, also called rational choice institutionalism), similar to rational choice theory or to act out of duty or an awareness of what one is "supposed" to do (normative institutions, also called historical institutionalism). An important contribution of new institutionalism was to add a cognitive influence. This perspective adds that, instead of acting under rules or based on obligation, individuals act because of conceptions.