A Closer Look at How Scholars Frame Their Research
Some scholars focused on incremental change have advanced sharp critiques of the critical juncture framework.*
The three questions presented on this slide focus on basic issues involved in these critiques. A few examples of the critiques are listed here.
1. Neglect of dimension of time.
2. Neglect of how institutions are created.
3. Static conception of institutions.
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*This literature sometimes refers to the punctuated equilibrium framework, a label routinely used to designate the same set of arguments advanced by critical juncture scholars.
The three questions presented on this slide focus on basic issues involved in these critiques. A few examples of the critiques are listed here.
1. Neglect of dimension of time.
- “…time is essentially irrelevant …. [T]he moments during which a system is reorganized are conceived as so infinitesimally short that they can ideally be considered as taking no time at all” (Streeck 2010: 665).
- This neglect of time is also suggested by scholars who argue that the critical juncture framework employs a limited, “comparative statics” approach that provides only fixed, atemporal snapshots of before-and-after conditions (Djelic 2010: 27-28; Thelen 2010).
2. Neglect of how institutions are created.
- “The critical junctures approach tends to focus our attention on the key events that create pressures for change, but not on the complex search process that follows whereby actors actually determine what institutional changes to make …” (Campbell 2010: 92).
- The critical juncture approach “misses entirely some of the most important ways in which institutions can evolve gradually over time” (Streeck and Thelen 2005: i).
3. Static conception of institutions.
- The critical juncture approach has “involved a highly static conception of institutions as ‘frozen’ residues, or ‘crystallizations’, of previous political conflict. (Streeck & Thelen 2005b: 6).
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*This literature sometimes refers to the punctuated equilibrium framework, a label routinely used to designate the same set of arguments advanced by critical juncture scholars.