反思与进展:新制度主义政治学的制度变迁理论

新制度主义政治理论被认为更有助于解释制度稳定与维持,而对制度变迁解释乏力,因为它仅把制度变迁看作是由外生因素引起的。面对这种批评,近年来,新制度主义者提出制度变迁的内生理论,并试图与外生理论结合起来,把制度的起源、稳定维持和急剧变动看成是一个统一的演化过程,更加注重制度变迁的历时与空间维度,对制度变迁中观念与制度的相互作用给予了更多的关注,洞悉路径依赖的多样性及其解释制度变迁的可能性。另外,制度变迁的动力与具体方式,制度的分层等问题也成为研究制度变迁的议题。新制度主义者的这些努力大大丰富了新制度主义对制度变迁的解释,增强了其理论说服力,但并没有解决批评者提出的所有问题,同时还带来了不少新问题。

Review and Progress:Institutional Change Theory of New Institutionalism Politics

The theory of new institutionalism politics is thought much stronger when explaining the institutional stabilization and maintenance than when explaining the institutional change, because it views the institutional change only as a result of Exogenous factors. Facing up to this critique, some new institutionalists begin to bring forward an Endogenous theory of institutional change, and try to combine it with the Exogenous theory to explain the institutional change. Also they treat the institutional origin, stabilization, maintenance and rapid change as a uniform evolving process. Meanwhile, they put more attention to the time and space dimensionalities of institutional change, and emphasize the interaction between ideas and institutions during the course of institutional change. Another emphasis of their researches is to discern the diversities of path dependence and its possibility to explain the change. Otherwise, the dynamics, specific modes and the institutional stratification also become important issues in the field of institutional change. Although these efforts have advanced greatly the power of new institutionalism in explaining the institutional change, they can not resolve all the old problems, instead bring some new ones.