The ‘new institutionalisms’ in rational choice
The rise of institutionalist analysis of the EU did not develop in isolation, but reflected a gradual and widespread re-introduction of institutions into a large body of theories (such as pluralism, Marxism, and neo-realism), in which institutions had been either absent or considered epiphenomenal, reflections of deeper causal factors or processes such as capitalism or the distribution of power in domestic societies or in the international system. By contrast with these institution-free accounts of politics, which dominated much of political science between the 1950s and the 1970s, three primary ‘institutionalisms’ developed during the course of the 1980s and early 1990s, each with a distinct definition of institutions and a distinct account of how they ‘matter’ in the study of politics (March and Olsen 1984, 1989; Hall and Taylor 1996).
The first arose within the rational-choice approach to the study of politics, as pioneered by students of American politics. Rational choice institutionalism began with the effort by American political scientists to understand the origins and effects of US Congressional institutions on legislative behaviour and policy outcomes. More specifically, rational choice scholars noted that majoritarian models of Congressional decision-making predicted that policy outcomes would be inherently unstable, since a simple majority of policy-makers could always form a coalition to overturn existing legislation, yet substantive scholars of the US Congress found considerable stability in Congressional policies. In this context, Kenneth Shepsle (1979, 1986) argued that Congressional institutions, and in particular the committee system, could produce ‘structure-induced equilibrium’, by ruling some alternatives as permissible or impermissible, and by structuring the voting power and the veto power of various actors in the decision-making process.