The Two Traditions of Institutional Designing: Dialogue Versus Decision?

Abstract

Practitioners of the arts of government, as well as their observers, have somewhat ambivalent views concerning the design of institutions within the public sector. On the one hand there is the “tireless tinkering” with institutions, ranging from the reform of a single institution or organization all the way to fundamental constitutional redesign. In practice, it appears that many people believe that structural reform is a worthy enterprise, given the amount of time and energy devoted to it. On the other hand, there is often profound skepticism about the real efficacy of conscious attempts at change. This skepticism is based in part on beliefs that institutions are highly resistant to change so that efforts at purposive transformation are likely to be thwarted by structural inertia. The skepticism may also be based on the belief that human capacities at understanding social structures and processes are sufficiently limited that attempts at imposing reforms may produce institutional outcomes worse than the problems they were intended to solve. In this view the best way to generate institutional change is to let it occur as an evolutionary process rather than imposing externally derived templates