Year: 2003
Type: article
Abstract: Thelen, 1 Institutions and Social Change: The Evolution of Vocational Training in Germany [DRAFT: comments welcome] Kathleen Thelen Northwestern University This paper examines the evolution of vocational training institutions in Germany from the late nineteenth century to the present, and uses this as a window on processes of institutional reproduction and change. Whereas earlier generations of institutional analysis focused primarily on the effects of different institutional configurations on policies and other outcomes, a growing number of studies have turned their attention to the question of how institutions themselves develop and evolve over time (e.g., among others, Clemens and Cook 1999; Pierson 2002; Greif and Laitin 2003). Current work in this area has been largely driven by dissatisfaction with existing treatments of the subject, and particularly those that draw a sharp line between the analysis of institutional reproduction and that of institutional change. One commonly invoked metaphor is a particular version of a punctuated equilibrium model, imported from evolutionary biology for politics by Stephen Krasner in 1988 (Krasner 1988) that emphasizes moments of openness and rapid innovation followed by long periods of institutional stasis or inertia. Such views of political and institutional change are associated with a number of influential works (Mancur Olson's (1982) theory of postwar economic growth comes particularly to mind) but they find expression in a good deal of the literature on critical junctures as well as
Author: Kathleen Thelen
Language: English
Topic: Education Systems and Policy
Subfield: Education
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W1952842467