"Institutions' role in the distribution of social power: Empowering? Equalizing power? Concealing power? Controlling power?"
Claus Offe, Humboldt University, Berlin

Abstract:
Using propositions of political theorists such as J. S. Mill, Weber, Foucault, and Habermas, the paper will focus on the alleged effect the crafting and operation of specific institutions has had or will have upon the dynamics and redistribution of social power. In doing so, and in providing applications from cases of institutional reform and transformation, I hope to make a link between the new institutionalist approaches in political science with the "X faces of power" debates of the seventies and eighties.


"Why Study Institutions?"
John Ferejohn, Stanford University


"The Petition as a Tool of Mobilization: Evidence from the Abolitionists' Congressional Campaign."
Daniel Carpenter, Harvard University

Abstract:
The petition is one of the most consequential yet least analyzed institutions of republican government.  In this speculative essay I interpret the petition as the historical solution to a network search problem faced by activists building new political organizations in network-rich but information-poor environments.  The list of signatories accompanying a petition is a rich political resource.  Specifically, the signatory list of a petition (1) identifies individuals sympathetic to its declaration, (2) locates those individuals (implicitly or explicitly) in a social structure, and (3) fosters new networks by virtue of the process of gathering signatures.  I assess this theory of the petition in an analysis of a partial sample of abolitionist petitions to the House of Representatives from the 23rd to the 25th Congress (1833-1839).  Several stylized features of these petitions – repeat signatories, the preponderance of door-to-door canvassing, copied signatures, and the abundance of non-voting signatories – roughly cohere with a mobilizing interpretation.  In addition, I present preliminary evidence that the cross-county distribution of petitions from New York anticipates Liberty Party voting in the 1840s in a way that other variables cannot.  The essay concludes that the abolitionists’ petition drive was as much a method of mobilization as an expression of public sentiment.  My interpretation suggests that the most important readers of a petition are its signatories, and raises the possibility that the petition can be politically consequential even when it is known to be ignored by its intended recipient.




"On Cognitive and Moral Learning of Institutions"
Ulrich K. Preuss, Freie University, Berlin

Abstract:
There is an inherent tension in democratic institutions between the supreme power of the people implied in the concept of popular sovereignty and its capacity to make reasonable use of that power. Already Rousseau recognized that the omnipotent sovereign – the people – is very unlikely to be omniscient – what he should be in order to make responsible decisions. If we accept Karl W. Deutsch’s statement that power means the dispensation from the necessity to learn we can understand that popular sovereignty, while a benefit for each free society, exposes it at the same time to the risks of myopia, of the dominance of all kinds of irrationality over reason, of ignorance, and of moral ‘understrain’, in other words: to the risk of non-learning. Liberal constitutionalism has traditionally been dealing with the problem of protecting individuals against popular sovereignty, while it contented itself with the optimistic assumption that the idea of limited government – as incarnated in the safe establishment of individual rights, of the separation of powers and of a powerful judiciary – would prevent ‘the people’ from committing too excessive stupidities to the detriment of all.

In my paper I shall argue that today the concept of limited government is still a necessary, but no longer a sufficient condition of good governance. Restraint on political power is pointless in spheres which are (no longer) regulated by the law and its enforcement through state power. This applies to four realms or instances, respectively which will be discussed in the paper: (1) social relations dominated by and functioning only due to the individuals’ capacity to interact according to moral norms (like marriage and family, education, the individuals’ attitude vis-à-vis strangers, ‘others’ and otherness in general); (2) the occurrence of marginalized groups whose members have become immune against the negative or positive sanctions of the society (like punks, skinheads, chronically unemployed individuals, homeless people et al.) and who constitute an ever growing segment of the populations within advanced Western democratic societies; (3) the sphere of a permanent technological and economic revolution and acceleration of epistemological innovation and social change which fosters the permanent devaluation of traditional both cognitive and moral certainties and which may give rise to attitudes of unsociable indifference and moral negligence. This hints to the dangers of cognitive and moral dissociation of the most advanced and core fraction of the population of the advanced Western societies; finally (4) the growing relevance of ‘emergent events’ which cannot be attributed to a distinctly linear causality but must be understood as being effected through a complex causality in which the moral responsibility of single individuals has become indiscernible (e.g., global warming, overuse of natural resources).

Rather than giving an answer to the question of how modern political institutions should be devised in order to respond adequately to these challenges, I will make a case for what I call ‘reflexive ignorance’: since cognitive and moral certainty is ever more difficult to achieve in our contemporary society, we must adopt an epistemological attitude which informs us about the lack of our knowledge and of the risks of ignorance for the cohesion of the democratic society.


"Authors and Actors: Executive-legislative Relations in French Constitution-making "
Jon Elster, Columbia University

Abstract:
Constitutions regulate, among other things, the relation between the legislative and the executive powers. In some constitution-making processes, these powers also serve as authors of the play, i.e. the constitutional framework, in which they will be acting. In particular, they assumed this dual role in four French episodes of constitution-making - in 1791, 1814, 1848 and 1958. Drawing on these cases, the  paper considers the tensions and biases that may result when those "crafting" the institutions include some of those who will be "operating" them.


"Power and Political Institutions"
Terry Moe, Stanford University

Abstract:
Rational choice theories tend to view political institutions as beneficent structures of voluntary cooperation that resolve collective action problems and generate gains from trade.  There is a dark side of these institutions, however, that needs to be appreciated as well.  In important respects, political institutions are structures of power (and coercion).  And while they may be good for some people—usually the more powerful—they are often bad for others.  While the empirical and more discursive aspects of the literature often seem to suggest that this darker side of political institutions has somehow been fitted into the theory, the theory really doesn't do this--and I believe there is a good bit of ambiguity surrounding what it does do.  In this paper, I try to show that the analytical core of the prevailing theory gives short shrift to considerations of power, and that it can and should be modified to take account of them.  Along the way, I try to clarify some of the issues that I think have been prime sources of ambiguity over the years, and to offer some perspective on the literature as a whole. 





"Public Policies as Institutions"
Paul Pierson, Harvard University

"Institutional Politics and Multi-Dimensional Actors: Organized Labor and America’s Urban Problem"
Margaret Weir, University of California, Berkeley

Kent Weaver, Brookings Institution




"Preserving the 'Dignity and Influence of the Court': Political Supports for Judicial Review in the United States"
Keith Whittington, Princeton University

Abstract:
A central philosophical objection to judicial review and constitutional interpretation by courts rests of concerns for democracy. The regular judicial nullification of policies adopted by elected officials at least raises problems of democratic legitimacy. The philosophical objection has been raised against a background over a hundred years of populist political argument in the United States that active use of the judicial power of constitutional interpretation should give way to the judgments of electoral and legislative majorities. Nonetheless, judicial review in the United States has thrived. This paper explores the political supports for judicial review by the Supreme Court in American history. Although active judicial review may appear problematic from a democratic perspective, political leaders have often lent their support to the courts and sought to bolster the authority of the judiciary to give meaning to the Constitution.

"Designing Judicial Review: From Strong to Weak Forms"
Mark Tushnet, Georgetown University

"Diversity and Judicial Decision-Making: Evidence from Affirmative Action Cases in the Federal Courts of Appeals, 1971-1999"
Charles Cameron, Columbia University
Abstract:
We study the effect of racial, gender, and ideological diversity on judicial decision-making
concerning affirmative action. More specifically, we examine how heterogeneity in the
composition of the three-judge panels of the U.S. Courts of Appeal affected the voting of the
judges sitting on those panels as they decided 179 cases concerning affirmative action, from
1971 to 1999. To do so, we create a new framework for studying interactive decisionmaking
on collegial courts. This “social economy” approach distinguishes the effects of a
judge’s own characteristics from the effects of other panel members’ characteristics, and both
from the “peer effect” of other judges’ voting choices. We illustrate practical and easily
implemented statistical methods for applying this framework to voting data from the U.S.
Courts of Appeals.
We find that increasing racial diversity on the panels of the Courts of Appeals substantially
changed the voting behavior of other judges on the panels, an effect distinguishable from
peer voting pressures. This finding suggests an apparent “deliberation effect” on racially
heterogeneous panels. But we also find that peer voting pressures are potent in the Courts of
Appeal, raising the possibility that highly motivated judges can “tip” the voting of colleagues
on a panel. We also uncover substantial effects from judges’ political ideologies, powerful
effects from circuit-level precedent, and considerable responsiveness to doctrinal changes
from the U.S. Supreme Court.



"Institutions and Social Change:  The Evolution of Vocational Training Institutions in Germany"
Kathleen Thelen, Northwestern University

Abstract:
This paper examines the development of vocational training institutions in Germany from the late nineteenth century, and uses this as a window on processes of institutional reproduction and change.  I argue against prominent versions of a punctuated equilibrium model that draw a sharp distinction between long periods of institutional "stasis" punctuated by moments of radical institutional innovation and change. The case of the German vocational training regim shows that institutions do not survive by standing still but rather precisely through their ongoing adaptation to changes in the political, market, and social environment.  This accounts for important observed continuities through putative "break points" in history, but also – more importantly perhaps – it provides insights into modes of incremental change that nonetheless over time cumulate into what amounts to institutional transformation.  The analysis underscores the limits of functionalist approaches to political and political-economic institutions, and provides insights into the processes through which the form and functions of institutions can be radically reconfigured over time.


"State Building or Blurring?: Public Finance and Private Governance in American Politics"
Elisabeth S. Clemens, University of Chicago

Abstract:
Political institutions do not develop in a vacuum.  The capacity of state agencies may be constituted from, augmented by, and undercut by relations with “private” organizations:  voluntary associations, for-profit contractors, and non-profit entities.  The autonomy and aspirations of state actors are shaped by ties of dependence and collaboration that crosscut the boundaries of public governance.  The character of this boundary has been contested repeatedly as American social policy has oscillated between periods of public autarky and phases of greater collaboration, across domains in which public agencies are self-sufficient and those where dependence is firmly established.  In the area of social policy, for example, a series of early twentieth-century reformers criticized the system of subsidies to private charities, championed the “associative state,” and then built public bureaucracies to implement New Deal policies.  The development of formal political institutions is actually a process of co-evolution with a shifting array of privately governed organizations.  As a lens for examining this process, this paper focuses on the combination of public finance and private governance that has been at the heart of many social programs from those early practices of subsidizing orphanages to current efforts to privatize core areas of social provision such as education.  The fluctuation reliance on, and rejection of, this type of arrangement illuminates processes of institutional change in a complex organizational field.

"Which Comes First, the Ideas or the Institutions? Toward a Synthesis of Multiple Traditions and Multiple Orders"
Rogers Smith, University of Pennsylvania

Abstract:
Historical institutional analysts have differed on how to connect the study of “ideas” and the study of “institutions.”  This essay builds on recent work by Karen Orren and Stephen Skowronek and Robert Lieberman to argue that we should analyze meaningful political development as involving durable shifts in authority among governing institutions, with ideas analyzed as constitutive elements of those institutions.  These authors argue persuasively that development can be engendered by conflict among different institution-centered “political orders.”  But we need a fuller sense of what constitutes a “political order,” and that sense requires us to recognize that ideological traditions play central roles in defining the goals, roles, and rules advanced by “political orders.”  The example pursued here is the role of racial ideas in American politics.  Racial ideologies have been defining elements of “racial political orders,” including both an evolving “white supremacist” order and a “transformative egalitarian” racial order.  Those orders, in turn, have done much to maintain but also to reconstitute racial identities, interests, and beliefs in American life.