Open AccessIDEATIONAL INSTITUTIONALISM: EXPLAINING INSTITUTIONAL TRANSFORMATIONS DURING A CRISIS
Author(s) -
Anton Onishchenko
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
vestnik permskogo universiteta. politologiâ
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
ISSN - 2218-1067
DOI - 10.17072/2218-1067-2021-2-5-15
Subject(s) - institutionalism , historical institutionalism , new institutionalism , soviet union , institutional change , institutional theory , positive economics , sociology , economic system , political science , epistemology , economics , social science , public administration , politics , law , philosophy
The role of agents' ideas in determining the direction of institutional transformations is often underestimated; this is especially true if one is analyzing the formation and/or reformation of institutional design during a crisis when the significance of other factors may decrease. Institutional approaches of historical institutionalism and rational choice institutionalism are not always able to adequately measure the impact that agents' ideas have on institutional transformations. Ideational institutionalism, on the contrary, allows one to focus on these ideas, as well as to analyze both ideas’ effect on emerging institutions and the impact of an agent’s ideas on ideas of other agents. Furthermore, ideational institutionalism in the form presented in the article proposes to move away from the perception of ideas exclusively as intersubjective and to separately study the ideas of each decision-maker; this allows one to assess the role of a particular agent in the formation of institutions. This approach is promising, in particular, for the analysis of the institutional changes that occurred in the post-Soviet countries after the collapse of the Soviet Union. The article discusses the main characteristics of the ideational approach and the framework of its use on the example of institutional changes in the Republic of Belarus in the 1990s.