Commissioned Book Review: J Mahoney and K Thelen, Explaining Institutional Change: Ambiguity, Agency and Power
| Author | Jonathan Hudson Drew |
| Published date | 01 November 2020 |
| Date | 01 November 2020 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/1478929920920107 |
| Subject Matter | Commissioned Book Reviews |
Political Studies Review
2020, Vol. 18(4) NP21 –NP22
journals.sagepub.com/home/psrev
Commissioned Book Review
920107PSW0010.1177/1478929920920107Political Studies ReviewCommissioned Book Review
book-review2020
Commissioned Book Review
Explaining Institutional Change: Ambiguity,
Agency and Power by J Mahoney and
K Thelen. New York: Cambridge University
Press, 2010. 254 pp., AUD127.95 (h/b), ISBN
9780521118835.
Contributions to theories of incrementalism
abound in the literature, but few have enjoyed a
reception quite like Mahoney and Thelen’s
Explaining Institutional Change: Ambiguity,
Agency and Power (Campbell, 2010; Heijden
and Kuhlmann, 2017). In 2020, the book has
acquired an impressive 2126 citations on Google
Scholar. It is an excellent read for policymakers
interested in the different ways political actors
might change policy in realpolitik, as well as
academics less familiar with incrementalism
who want to understand a sophisticated incre-
mental theory that has withstood the test of time.
In the book’s first chapter, the book
expounds upon modes of institutional change
outlined in Streeck and Thelen’s Beyond
Continuity: Institutional Change in Advanced
Political Economies (Heijden and Kuhlmann,
2017; Streeck and Thelen, 2005: 19). These
modes include conversion, layering, displace-
ment and drift (pp. 15, 16).
A summary of these modes will be briefly
provided. Conversion refers to when the re-
interpretation and new implementation of an
existing policy leads to institutional change
while formal rules stay unchanged (p. 17).
When a rule operates differently as a result of
being integrated with a new rule is what is
known as ‘layering’ (p. 17). However, if layer-
ing upsets the institution’s logic responsible for
its self-reproduction, significant change can
arise from layering (pp. 16, 17). Displacement
occurs when a new institutional arrangement
can, sometimes suddenly, replace an existing
policy (p. 16). When the environmental setting
changes but formal rules remain unchanged,
this can lead to an altered effect of an institu-
tion and is referred to as ‘drift’ (p. 17), a con-
cept borrowed from Hacker (2005).
The book further develops these modes of
institutional change by integrating a dynamic
of agency into the model (p. 23). The editors
highlight how drift can be executed by ‘parasitic
symbionts’, actors who both take advantage of
compliance gaps in an institution and aim to sus-
tain the institution over time, so that the institu-
tion persists but, in the long term, changes in
impact (p. 24). Layering can be driven by ‘sub-
versives’, actors who keep up the appearance of
endorsing the institution, while they wait for an
opportunity to change an existing institution by
attaching to it new institutional components
(pp. 25, 26). Displacement arises when ‘insur-
rectionaries’ work to undermine institutions in
an overt way that can result in a critical juncture
(pp. 23, 24). Conversion can arise from ‘oppor-
tunists’ who wait for an opportunity to reinter-
pret old institutional arrangements in ways that
alter an institution’s impact (p. 27).
The chapters that follow provide helpful
realpolitik examples of the different modes of
incremental change that the editors outline in
Chapter 1. In Chapter 2, Falleti demonstrates
how ‘subversives’ brought about significant
policy change in Brazil to health policy through
a gradual process of ‘layering’ (p. 40). In the
1970s, the Brazilian military provided health
care to rural areas with the view to quietening
political activists in non-metropolitan areas
and establishing authoritarian rule (p. 40).
While this was the government’s goal, ‘subver-
sives’ in health organisations were given an
opportunity to operate within the authoritarian
regime’s institutional arrangement (p. 56). In
so doing, they gradually realigned the health
reforms with an ideology of decentralisation
and universalism (p. 56). The author concludes
that it was the less visible gradual ‘layering’
achieved by health organisations leading up to
the critical juncture of the 1988 health-care
constitutional reform that induced this change
and not the constitutional reform itself (p. 58).
In Chapter 3, Onoma provides an interesting
example of drift driven by ‘parasitic symbionts’
who exploited Kenyan trust in the institution of
land documentation in a way that ultimately under-
mined this institutional arrangement (pp. 65, 88).
Land documentation was originally a sound insti-
tution which protected landowner rights (p. 88).
However, the immense benefits of the institution
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