Entry requirements

Political Science advanced course or equivalent education.

Learning outcomes

After completion of the course the students are expected to:

- to have deepened their understanding and knowledge of institutional theories in social and political science; about commonalities and differences between the three varieties of institutionalism: historical, rational choice, and sociological; and about the point of institutionalist theories compared to other theories and how they matter and are used in empirical research

- more thoroughly understand the importance of legacies for contemporary politics

- be acquainted with the research done by senior scholars in comparative politics in the department

- be able to apply and/or discuss the theories in a smaller study ('Final paper'), and defend and discuss the paper in a seminar with the other students

Content

The course builds on insights about political impact of institutions the students have gained from the A level course on "Citizens, the state and politics" and from the B level course on "Problems of democracy". The course discusses the commonalities and differences between the three varieties of institutionalism: historical, rational choice, and sociological. After finishing the course the students are expected to have a deeper understanding about the point of institutionalist theories, their common traits and disagreements, and how they matter and are used in empirical research.

The second overarching aim of the course is to study and discuss the importance of legacies, and bottom-up processes that may determine outcomes for contemporary politics. In any given time actors are influenced, constrained, and helped by structures they have not chosen but inherited. Be it cultural values, class structures, elite patterns, organisation of political economies, or gender-based hierarchies – such legacies influence politics, the nature of conflict and democratic quality. Nevertheless, it is obvious that such constraints can be broken under certain conditions when rapid political change occurs. Such examples will be studied as well and used to determine strengths and weaknesses in institutionalist theories.

The focus on institutions has an important backdrop in recent advances in political science. "Institutions now stand at the heart of much theorising and explanation in political science", says Paul Pierson (2004). We take institutions to mean the 'rules of the game' in politics; rules that can be formally drafted in a constitution or informally given by tradition; they can be in place and valid for a whole polity or restricted to a village or a small profession. Institutions can be changed; indeed, political conflict is often about actors' attempts to alter them. Several articles deal with institutional change.

Legacies and institutions, sometimes closely intertwined, are first discussed more generally and theoretically and then in relation to gender, transitions to democracy in East and Central Europe, and finally in relation to development in Africa, Asia and Latin America.

Part I: Top-Down and Bottom-Up Perspectives on Development – How far can we go with institutional theories?

Sten Widmalm

In this first part of the course we begin with an introduction to the course, and a presentation with a rather broad perspective on institutions and development. We look at what creates or breaks development in other parts, especially poor ones, of the world, and we discuss how far we can go with institutionalist oriented theories. We will look at research contributions arguing strongly in favour of such perspectives, and we will look at a number of contributions that pose several problems to them. The question posed here is: How far can institutionalist oriented theories take us when trying to understand and pursue development?

Part II (part II and II may switch place in the schedule): Institutional theories

Hans Blomkvist

Through Paul Pierson's influential book and several often-quoted articles we will discuss the three varieties of institutionalism and the research agenda they present. Particularly we will try to focus on perhaps the least understood problem in institutional analysis: how and why do institutions change? Most of the articles are of fairly recent origin, but we will also read two slightly older to situate this discussion somewhat. We will also read four of the chapters from Mahoney - Rueschemeyer's book to relate institutional analysis to comparative historical analysis and case study analysis.

Part: II: Gender and political institutions

Christina Bergqvist

This theme deals with democratic quality, legacies and public policies from a gender perspective. The field of feminist comparative policy seeks to study empirically and theorise gender. How are states, public policy and gender-based hierarchies in public as well as private domains related? What driving forces do we find behind gender equal policies?

Part III: State and Nation-building in Post-Communist Europe

Li Bennich-Björkman

This theme focuses the state, responses to state-building and nation-building in Russia and other post-communist and post-Soviet states. Not least will the interaction between successes and failures of state-building and legacies of national identity and nationalism be dwelled upon since nationalism played a crucial role in bringing down the Soviet empire.

Part VI: The 2004 "Orange revolution" in Ukraine

Astrid Hedin

Case study: The 2004 "Orange revolution" in Ukraine. In this part of the course, we look at post-communist democratisations in Eastern Europe as examples of institutional change. How can theories of institutionalism and of institutional change help us understand these recent events? Students practice analytical skills with a case study of the 2004 "Orange movement" in Ukraine.

Instruction

The course consists of lectures and seminars.

Assessment

The requirements of the course are:

- Weekly reading reports at 3–4 pages (1.5 spaced, 12 points) which are due at the seminars. In the reading reports, students are expected to survey the literature and critically discuss its strength and weaknesses. Seminar teachers may have specific instruction for the seminars. In such cases the seminar instructions will be handed out at the lecture before the seminar.

- A final course paper of 8-10 pages (1.5 spaced, 12 points). The topic can be chosen freely, but the paper should discuss research questions covered during the course and make active use of the course readings.

- Attendance and active participation and group seminars.

Grades will be given according the the European (ECTS) standard, that is using a seven-step scale. For the Swedish students, grades will also be given according to the "old" system of three levels. The course grade will reflect a combination of all requirements, where the reading reports (altogether 8) will make up about 40 % of the grade, the final paper 50 %, and seminar participation correspond to about 10 %.

The Final paper should focus on one of the themes in the course. You can discuss the outline of the paper with one of the course teachers. The paper, which you will distribute to all the course participants, will be discussed in a seminar at the end of the course where your active participation is part of the course requirements. The paper should be about 8-10 pages, a maximum of 4,000 words (excluding list of references). If your paper is longer than 4,000 words it will not pass and it will not be discussed in the seminar. If you would like to write your paper so that it forms a part of your D-essay (D-uppsats) or Research plan for your PhD ("introduktionspromemoria") that is no problem; on the contrary, we encourage you to do just that. But in that case your paper must still be an independent contribution in relation to your coming D-level/master-thesis (i.e. you cannot simply copy the whole or any parts of this contribution and include it in your coming D-level/master-thesis). These are things we look at when we grade the contributions:

To what extent

1) Is a question explicitly formulated?

2) Is the paper organised around that question?

3) Is (part of) the course literature used to address the question?

4) Is the question formulated so that a meaningful and relevant answer can be retrieved from the course literature?

5) Is the question answered?

6) Is the paper well written, i.e. is it easy to follow the line of argument?

On our course web you can find three illustrations of fine but different Final papers from earlier years: Daniel Sjöström's thoughtful review of the course literature that dealt with modernisation theory ; Gina Gustavsson's distinct critique and discussion of a central assumption in institutional theories; and Andreas Persson's paper that poses two central theories/hypotheses in the course literature against each other and tests them on an empirical case from the course literature.

In case you need to get in touch with any of the professors before or after their classes, the easiest way is to send an email to their address: Firstname.Secondname@statsvet.uu.se

Course level in relation to degree requirements

The course provides the students with the opportunity to practice independent evaluation and critical treatment of institutional theories by relating these theories both to empirical contexts and to theoretical discussions.