新制度学派对后共产主义国家制度变迁的探索

与历史制度主义、社会学制度主义和理性选择等学派有关制度变迁的解释不同,以奥菲、约翰逊等人为代表的部分新制度主义者在详细阐述后共产主义国家特殊政治、经济和社会条件的基础上,提出了制度变迁的路径偶然理论。这一理论认为,在苏东剧变后产生的后共产主义国家,制度变迁的路径选择完全是偶然的。这种偶然性表现在这些国家新掌权者偶然的政策选择上,偶然的政策选择在制度遗产、国家能力和政策顺序等因素的干预作用下,制度变迁以消极型制度设计或积极型制度设计的方式发生。路径偶然理论在一定程度上解释了后共产主义国家制度变迁的方式,也反映了制度变迁研究方法的创新,但同时也存在明显的缺陷。

The New-Institutionalist Research into Institutional Changes of the Post-Communist Countries

Unlike interpretation of the path theory of the institutional changes illustrated by Historical Institutionalism, Sociological Institutionalism and the Rational Choice, on the bases of a thorough discussion of the extraordinary political, economic and social conditions of the post-communist countries, some of the New Institutionalists, represented by Glaus Offe and Juliet Johnson and etc., came up with the theory of Path Contingency. This theory deems that the path of the institutional changes of the post-communist countries that came into being after the revulsion of the Socialism Camp was entirely contingent. This contingency exhibits on the new governor's contingent policy choices for his country, and the contingent policy choices were intervened by institutional legacies, state capacities and policy sequencing, which then formed two forms of institutional changes: the passive institutional design and the active institutional design. The theory of Path Contingency in some degree interpreted the style of the post-communist countries' institutional changes, and it also reflected the methodic innovations for the research of the institutional changes, but at the same time, some of the obvious defects existed as well.