Determining the Causal Significance of Institutions: Accomplishments and Challenges

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Determining the Causal Significance of
Institutions Accomplishments and Challenges

• Arild Underdal,
• University of Oslo,
• Department of Political Science

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The question

• What roles do institutions play in causing and
  confronting global environmental changes?
• Environmental and resource regimes
• Other institutions
• What factors determine the resilience of
  institutions in the face of global environmental
  changes?

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The answer (in essence)

• In a generic sense, institutions are important
  factors shaping actor behaviour and outcomes of
  human activities
• Deductive analysis proves that institutions can
  make a substantial difference, and will do so
  under certain conditions
• Empirical studies have provided compelling
  evidence that institutions sometimes do make a
  significant difference
• Governance without (central) government can be
  effective, in favourable circumstances
• Conclusion emerging from studies of local
  communities and the international system

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The answer (in essence)

• The causal significance of institutions (for
  environmental change) varies substantially,
  depending on
• The importance of the domain of human activities
  influenced (D)
• The weight within this domain of the actors whose
  behaviour is influenced (W) and
• The extent to which the behaviour of these actors
  is influenced (E)
• Si (Di.Wi.Ei)

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Four major achievements

• Improved understanding of the causal mechanisms
  and pathways through which institutions shape
  behaviour and outcomes
• Improved knowledge and understanding of patterns
  of variance, particularly with regard to regime
  effectiveness
• Progress in studying institutional interplay and
  effects of institutional complexes
• More ambitious and sophisticated use of the
  methodological repertoire of social science

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Challenges preface

• Observation to an outsider, the literature may
  well leave a somewhat confusing set of messages
• Different taxonomies and conceptual frameworks
  are in use
• For example, no common taxonomy of causal
  mechanisms
• Some basic propositions diverge
• Most fundamentally Realist and sociological
  (constructivist) research questions the causal
  significance of specific regimes and
  organisations
• Some empirical findings and observations diverge
• In some cases students even reach different
  conclusions for the same institution

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Challenges preface

• Response a fair amount of this confusion will
  clear if we can separate what is incompatible
  from what is merely different
• Key look first at the research question!

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The research question (I)

• Mode of inquiry logic or fact?
• The unit of analysis
• Single institution or component (e.g. specific
  protocol)
• Institutional complex or system
• Problem
• Function

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The research question (II)

• Main independent variable institution
• Do we focus on institutions as established
  systems of norms and rules, or on the process of
  institution-building?
• Do we see (the development of) regimes and
  organisations as integral elements of more
  comprehensive processes of collective response?
• Do we see specific institutions as embedded in
  some pre-institutional substructure?
• Schools that question the causal efficacy of
  specific regimes and organisations consider some
  more basic social order to be of fundamental
  importance

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The research question (III)

• The dependent variable effect
• At what stage do we measure effect?
• The causal chain output outcome impact
• What is our point of reference?
• the no-regime counterfactual
• some notion of what qualifies as a good
  solution

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The research question (IV)

• The full explanatory model
• Which non-institutional independent or
  intervening variables are included?
• Are the effects of these variables systematically
  and explicitly measured?

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Methodological approach

• Intensive case study
• Often focusing primarily on institutional
  mechanisms or pathways
• Extensive large-N studies
• Often designed for determining the direction,
  form, and strength of effects

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Major challenges (1)

• Improve our understanding of regimes and
  organisations as integral components of larger
  causal complexes
• Institutional complexes
• Collective response processes
• Specific regimes and organisations as embedded in
  pre-institutional substructures

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Major challenges (2)

• More explicit, systematic, and reliable
  measurement of effect
• Achilles heel counterfactual analysis
• Another challenge is tracing effects that are
  contingent and characterised by threshold and
  tipping points

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Major challenges (3-4)

• Improve our understanding of the role of
  institutions established for other purposes
• To get at the role of institutions in causing and
  confronting (global) environmental change at
  large, we also need studies using problem or
  function as unit of analysis