Good in a Crisis: Constructivism's Institutionalism and the Political Economy of Disequilibrium

Properly understood, constructivism is ontologically institutionalist.  Yet, unlike more conventional institutionalist approaches, it is profoundly wedded to the inherent contingency of social, political and economic change.  This prepares it well for the analysis of crisis and disequilibrium and suggests that it might be capable of providing an institutionalist antedote to the characteristic tendency in comparative political economy to see path dependent dynamics as self-equilibrating.  From a constructivist perspective, path dependent dynamics are no more likely to prove self-equilibrating than they are cumulatively destabilising – and the identification of such cumulatively destabilising dynamics offers a vital and fresh perspective on the origins of crisis and institutional disjuncture.  Returning to the ontological origins of constructivism’s institutionalism (in Berger and Luckman and Searle), this paper seeks to map out a constructivist institutionalist political economy of crisis and disequibrium, contrasting it with more conventional institutionalist approaches and showing how it might better prepare us for the times in which we now acknowledge ourselves to live.