A Study On The Institutional Change Theory Of Historical Institutionalism

Historical Institutionalism, as an important school of new institutionalism in political science, gets wide spread attention in recent years. It has been widely used in political empirical analysis. The institutional change theory is an important part of Historical Institutionalism, and it also carries several important questions: why do institutions change? How do institutions change? This thesie contains three parts to analyze and summarize the institutional change theory of Historical Institutionalism.The first part is the introduction of the production and institutional analysis framework of Historical Institutionalism. The theoretical background contains the basic hypothesis of History Institutionalism, the concept of institutions and research approaches. In the theory, it is hypothesized that the individual is bounded rationality, the institutions can constraint and shape the individual's ideas and preference. Institutions include the formal and informal rules. The institutional contexts include: the competitive election rules, the institutional structure of political parties, government structures and unions, such as organizations of economic actors. Under the institutional background, Historical Institutionalism does research through calculus approach and cultural approach.The second part describes the basic views of institutional change theory of Historical Institutionalism. This part contains four aspects that the connotation, conditions, the momentum and the approaches of institutional change. Institutional change under the perspective of History Institutionalism is regarded as a staged process. Individuals, groups and related institutions have an impact on institutional change, and in certain historical conditions and circumstances, the interaction between the various factors directly affects the process of institutional change. The process of institutional change is in the state of"punctuated equilibrium". The institutional change may be instantaneous, and also it may be long-term, for institutions has some characters just as stability, which does not make the change happened so easily affected by various factors. The characteristic of path dependence plays a key role in relative balance period, but institutions are not eternal, when reaching the crucial junctures, institutions will change vehemently.The third part is the analysis of the value and insufficient of the institutional change theory. Historical Institutionalism is based on the traditional political theory and uses the modern social science methods to analyze the relations between institutions and human being from a historical and comparative perspective. The institutional change theory of Historical Institutionalism has its own characters. Meanwhile, the function of specific theoretical prediction of Historical Institutionalism are inadequate. Some views and approaches of Historical Institutionalism also exist in Rational Choice Institutionalism and Sociological Institutionalism, which makes the theory has certain split characteristics.