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"Olsen, Johan P"
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The Institutional Dynamics of International Political Orders
The history of international political orders is written in terms of continuity and change in domestic and international political relations. As a step toward understanding such continuity and change, we explore some ideas drawn from an institutional perspective. An institutional perspective is characterized in terms of two grand issues that divide students of international relations and other organized systems. The first issue concerns the basic logic of action by which human behavior is shaped. On the one side are those who see action as driven by a logic of anticipated consequences and prior preferences. On the other side are those who see action as driven by a logic of appropriateness and a sense of identity. The second issue concerns the efficiency of history. On the one side are those who see history as efficient in the sense that it follows a course leading to a unique equilibrium dictated by exogenously determined interests, identities, and resources. On the other side are those who see history as inefficient in the sense that it follows a meandering, path-dependent course distinguished by multiple equilibria and endogenous transformations of interests, identities, and resources. We argue that the tendency of students of international political order to emphasize efficient histories and consequential bases for action leads them to underestimate the significance of rule- and identity-based action and inefficient histories. We illustrate such an institutional perspective by considering some features of the coevolution of politics and institutions, particularly the ways in which engagement in political activities affects the definition and elaboration of political identities and the development of competence in politics and the capabilities of political institutions.
Journal Article
Maybe It Is Time to Rediscover Bureaucracy
This article questions the fashionable ideas that bureaucratic organization is an obsolescent, undesirable, and non-viable form of administration and that there is an inevitable and irreversible paradigmatic shift towards market- or network-organization. In contrast, the paper argues that contemporary democracies are involved in another round in a perennial debate and ideological struggle over what are desirable forms of administration and government: that is, a struggle over institutional identities and institutional balances. The argument is not that bureaucratic organization is a panacea and the answer to all challenges of public administration. Rather, bureaucratic organization is part of a repertoire of overlapping, supplementary, and competing forms coexisting in contemporary democracies, and so are market-organization and network-organization. Rediscovering Weber's analysis of bureaucratic organization, then, enriches our understanding of public administration. This is in particular true when we (a) include bureaucracy as an institution, not only an instrument; (b) look at the empirical studies in their time and context, not only at Weber's ideal-types and predictions; and (c) take into account the political and normative order bureaucracy is part of, not only the internal characteristics of “the bureau.”
Journal Article
Democratic accountability and the terms of political order
This paper explores the shifting significance of accountability processes and why they sometimes attract considerable public attention and citizens’ involvement, whereas at other times they escape public notice. Accountability processes are conceived of as order-maintaining or order-transforming processes and I interpret the recent obsession with democratic accountability as part of a struggle over the terms of political order. This paper attends to the importance of political association involving different mixes of unity/diversity, trust/mistrust, and historical experiences; political organization and the ordering routines, ideas, and resources of different institutions; and political agency and shifting attention, zones of acceptance, and action capabilities.
Journal Article
Change and continuity: an institutional approach to institutions of democratic government
While it is commonplace to argue that political institutions are a source of inertia and resistance to change and the New Institutionalism is unable to explain change, this paper takes the opposite view. First, the problem of change is reformulated and it is observed that institutions have a role in generating both order and change and in balancing the two. Second, the concepts of institution and institutionalization are elaborated. Third, institutional sources of change and continuity are explored. Fourth, some implications for how democratic change and order can be conceived are spelled out, and, finally, some future challenges are suggested.
Journal Article
Garbage Cans, New Institutionalism, and the Study of Politics
Bendor, Moe, and Shotts want to rescue some of the ideas of the garbage can model and the new institutionalism. Their rescue program, however, is alien to the spirit of not only our work but also some recent developments that may promise a climate of dialogue between different approaches in political science. Bendor, Moe, and Shotts place themselves closer to a tradition of unproductive tribal warfare than to more recent attempts to explore the limits of and the alternatives to (means-end) rational interpretations of political actors, institutions, and change. By building on a narrow concept of what is valuable political science, they cut themselves off from key issues that have occupied political scientists for centuries.
Journal Article
Physical constraints and functional plasticity of cellulases
Enzyme reactions, both in Nature and technical applications, commonly occur at the interface of immiscible phases. Nevertheless, stringent descriptions of interfacial enzyme catalysis remain sparse, and this is partly due to a shortage of coherent experimental data to guide and assess such work. In this work, we produced and kinetically characterized 83 cellulases, which revealed a conspicuous linear free energy relationship (LFER) between the substrate binding strength and the activation barrier. The scaling occurred despite the investigated enzymes being structurally and mechanistically diverse. We suggest that the scaling reflects basic physical restrictions of the hydrolytic process and that evolutionary selection has condensed cellulase phenotypes near the line. One consequence of the LFER is that the activity of a cellulase can be estimated from its substrate binding strength, irrespectively of structural and mechanistic details, and this appears promising for in silico selection and design within this industrially important group of enzymes.
Enzyme reactions at interfaces are common in both Nature and industrial applications but no general kinetic framework exists for interfacial enzymes. Here, the authors kinetically characterize 83 cellulases and identify a scaling relationship between ligand binding strength and maximal turnover, a so-called linear free energy relationship, which may help rationalize cellulolytic mechanisms and guide the selection of technical enzymes.
Journal Article
Europe in search of political order : an institutional perspective on unity/diversity, citizens/their helpers, democratic design/historical drift and the co-existence of orders
This book deals with ongoing processes of European cooperation and integration, processes that may have a potential to change the political organization of Europe. Based on ideas from ‘the new institutionalism’ the book offers a systematic perspective on institutional change and in particular the role of institutions in relation to four central and durable issues in the study of political life. These are: (1) the mediation between unity and diversity: what ties a society together and what keeps it apart. (2) The relations between citizens and their helpers: why the democratic deficit in the European Union can not be eliminated solely by making mechanisms of direct citizens participation and representation more efficient. Needed are also institutions that make direct participation redundant because they routinely work with integrity, generating expected and desired outcomes. (3) The relation between democratic design and historical drift: To what degree democracies are able to design and reform key institutions of governance so that their structures reflect popular will, understanding and control. (4) The co-existence of old and new political orders: How elements of a new order may supplement rather than replace elements of the old order, generating a ‘mixed order’ based on partly inconsistent principles and rules.
eBook
Interrelationships between cellulase activity and cellulose particle morphology
It is well documented that the enzymatic hydrolysis of cellulose follows a reaction pattern where an initial phase of relatively high activity is followed by a gradual slow-down over the entire course of the reaction. This phenomenon is not readily explained by conventional factors like substrate depletion, product inhibition or enzyme instability. It has been suggested that the underlying reason for the loss of enzyme activity is connected to the heterogeneous structure of cellulose, but so far attempts to establish quantitative measures of such a correlation remain speculative. Here, we have carried out an extensive microscopy study of Avicel particles during extended hydrolysis with
Hypocrea jecorina
cellobiohydrolase 1 (CBH1) and endoglucanase 1 and 3 (EG1 and EG3) alone and in mixtures. We have used differential interference contrast microscopy and transmission electron microscopy to observe and quantify structural features at μm and nm resolution, respectively. We implemented a semi-automatic image analysis protocol, which allowed us to analyze almost 3000 individual micrographs comprising a total of more than 300,000 particles. From this analysis we estimated the temporal development of the accessible surface area throughout the reaction. We found that the number of particles and their size as well as the surface roughness contributed to surface area, and that within the investigated degree of conversion (<30 %) this measure correlated linearly with the rate of reaction. Based on this observation we argue that cellulose structure, specifically surface area and roughness, plays a major role in the ubiquitous rate loss observed for cellulases.
Journal Article
The New Institutionalism: Organizational Factors in Political Life
Contemporary theories of politics tend to portray politics as a reflection of society, political phenomena as the aggregate consequences of individual behavior, action as the result of choices based on calculated self-interest, history as efficient in reaching unique and appropriate outcomes, and decision making and the allocation of resources as the central foci of political life. Some recent theoretical thought in political science, however, blends elements of these theoretical styles into an older concern with institutions. This new institutionalism emphasizes the relative autonomy of political institutions, possibilities for inefficiency in history, and the importance of symbolic action to an understanding of politics. Such ideas have a reasonable empirical basis, but they are not characterized by powerful theoretical forms. Some directions for theoretical research may, however, be identified in institutionalist conceptions of political order.
Journal Article