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Historical institutionalism (HI) is a social science method that uses institutions to find sequences of social, political, economic behavior and change across time. It is a comparative approach to the study of all aspects of human organizations and does so by relying heavily on case studies. Borrowing from Charles Tilly, historical institutionalism is a method apt for measuring "big structures, large processes, and () huge comparisons".〔Charles Tilly. (1984). "Big structures, Large Processes, and Huge Comparisons".〕 Historical Institutionalism has generated some of the most important books in the fields of sociology, political science and economics. In fact, some of these studies have inspired policy and its scholars have received numerous awards. Although historical institutionalism proper is fairly new (circa 1979), it identifies with the great traditions in history, philosophy, politics, sociology and economics. ==Old and new institutionalism== Institutions have been always central to social science but they have not been addressed with the same emphasis and manner in every approach. Before and after the turn of the twentieth century, several scholars were writing about institutions, but they had not developed a theory of institutions yet. Most of these approaches relied heavily on the study of formal institutions (i.e. the law) (see hermeneutics). Moreover, they were highly normative and, thus, prescriptive (i.e. Weber prescribed the professionalization of bureaucracy in order to have a modern state). This is often called "old institutionalism". During the 1950s, structural-functionalism blurred the study of institutions. They were more concerned about the variability of the modernization process across countries and about prescribing and generalizing at the systemic level rather than acknowledging the different paths that development can take. (i.e. Gabriel Almond and Sidney Verba, ''The Civic Culture''). The new institutionalism begins with the works of Samuel Huntington, ''Political Order in Changing Societies''; Barrington Moore's, ''Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy'', and more specifically Theda Skocpol’s, ''States and Social Revolutions: A Comparative Analysis of France, Russia & China''. These books spawned the new research program. As stated above, before HI arrived, institutions were only treated as the formal rules of behavior (i.e. the law). In contrast, historical institutionalism has loosened the definition of institutions. In this new approach, institutions can take the shape of a formal bureaucratic structure but also an ideology or an informal custom. The significance of this change of approach is that historical institutionalism denies that power and history have only one source as past approaches (i.e. the State) and has given agency to all kinds of social groups and behaviors (e.g. in ''Weapons of the Weak'' James Scott acknowledges the power of "gossip" in political life.) In emphasizing the participation of all kind of groups, not just elites or the state, historical institutionalism offers a dynamic approach to history. Moreover, HI avoids prescription. On the contrary, since historical institutionalism is interested in the richness and different paths that a revolution or an economic reform can take given that different groups participate in each case, they are sensitive to the differences that can occur when following a particular political design (i.e. democracy). In that sense, it also avoids the teleological determinism of past approaches. For historical institutionalists, actors are both produced by, and are producers of, history. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Historical institutionalism」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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