In recent years societal institutions have been changing under global and endogenous pressures, and the “rules of the game” once seen as “frozen” institutional landscapes have been eroding.
Theories of institutional change have thus far concentrated too much on explaining path dependent inertia, while the process and mechanisms of change have remained less explored. According to scholars as Douglas North, Peter Hall or Rainer Lepsius, we can explain these changes in relation to shifting interests and ideas. The changes in societal institutions from social policy to education and labour markets will have major effects on the living conditions, patterns of trust, and legitimacy in European societies. Since some politically induced reform processes and subterranean social transformations imply a long-term path departure, available methodological concepts for the thus far rather static comparative analysis of institutions are in need for revision. Welfare state institutions, for instance, are still modeled as welfare regimes that are used in a rather time-invariant way even if they potentially allow for measuring dynamic processes of departure from an ideal-type model.
Therefore, this project will focus on more specific societal institutions in a time-varying manner instead of broad welfare state arrangements. The research will cover theoretical aspects of institutional change, methodological frameworks for identifying and measuring these processes, effects of political reforms on (welfare state) institutions, empirical studies of institutional developments, and the outcomes of these changes.
