Political scientists studying institutional development face the challenge of accounting for both continuity and change over time. Models of path dependence based on increasing returns, inspired by the example of the QWERTY typewriter keyboard, have played an important role in the analysis of institutional continuity, but they have been criticized for their inability to accommodate change. In t...

This paper explores the mutual influence between the institutional development in Athens in the archaic and classical periods and the contemporary changes in economic life. This enhances our understanding of the causes and consequences of institutional change. It is also worth exploring in view of the suggested connections between economic development, markets and democracy. Between 600 and 322...

The formulation of strategy is generally treated as a rational process of matching corporate capabilities to market demands. But this does not always account well for the heterogeneity observed in corporate strategies toward complex environmental issues such as climate change. In this chapter, we propose that strategy is often developed in light of expectations and assumptions concerning a firm...

Little is known about how cultural and institutional development interact with each other over time. To study this process, we construct new annual measures of cultural dynamics and institutional development for a paradigmatic episode of change, seventeenth century England. The institutional measures reflect citations of cases and statutes appearing in later legal decisions, thereby capturing t...

How do we explain the dynamic processes that underlie institutional change? This is a crucial — and still unresolved — question for the social sciences. Sociologists have tended to analyze institutional change in terms of agency, focusing on the key role of entrepreneurial actors in shaping institutional outcomes (Fligstein and McAdam, 2011) . Rational choice scholars in political science and p...

The perception of childhood as a period of dependence and innocence has a long history. Being strongly associated with the Romantic Movement of eighteenth-century Europe it resonates with more recent Western theories of child development, ideas about child rearing and policies relating to the care and education of children. The advent of a global society, however, demands that we examine and re...

Political realities and institutional structures are often ignored when gathering evidence to influence population health policies. If these policies are to be successful, social science literature on policy change should be integrated into the population health approach. In this contribution, drawing on the work of John W. Kingdon and related scholarship, we set out to examine how key componen...