Institutional Syncretism and the Limits of Path Dependence: A Theory of Regime Instability

Historical institutionalism challenged the dominant causal structure posited by older forms of comparative historical analysis.  It moved away from social and political structures as the dominant arbiter of historical outcomes, and posited that there were critical junctures in which actors enjoyed greater autonomy to choose between alternative historical paths.  Through a variety of mechanisms (increasing returns to scale, sunk costs, feedback loops, etc.) such choices become locked-in and actors have difficulty affecting anything other than evolutionary or incremental change as time passes.  This paper examines an understudied phenomenon, critical junctures that do not generate path dependence.  Instead of institutional lock-in such critical junctures lead to periods of institutional instability and strings of potential critical junctures that offer the possibility of readjustment.  This failure to create institutional stability is a product of circumstances where the strength of actors at critical junctures are out of sync with the underlying structures of power in society.  Such critical junctures produce a condition which can be termed “institutional syncretism,” where the institutional compromise made at a critical juncture has not generated a set of institutions that is capable of effectively managing the inherent logic of social cleavage and conflict in society.  This condition can be a function of “defective” institutional choice or of a “Hobson’s” choice where no stable, effective set of institutions may be possible.  The concepts and logics outlined in this paper are illustrated by examining the history of regime instability in Germany from collapse of the German Empire in 1918 through the founding of the Federal Republic of Germany in 1949.