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Purpose: The Republic of Cyprus is a small EU member state whose domestic administrative structures replicate an enduring tradition of centralisation. This study employs three Europeanisation processes toinvestigate the influence of European integration on EU specialised administrative services and explain possible differentiations.Design: This research employs two methodological tools: a literature review of domestic and international literature on Europeanisation and historical institutionalism, and a field study employing interviews and questionnaires with public servants working within these services.Findings: The results suggest that while Cyprus’s EU membership has played a significant role in the Europeanisation of domestic administrative structures, this process remains incomplete due to historical continuitiesfrom previous eras. These have an enduring impact on formal andinformal institutions, diminishing the role of the examined services and constraining the behaviour of public servants.Academic contribution to the field: This study offers a theoretical contribution by providing a comprehensive understanding of moderate Europeanisation effects on EU specialised structures within the Cypriot administrativeframework. It also highlights the consequences of historical continuities manifested through formal and informal institutional constraints (endogenous characteristics, tangible factors, and conservative attitudes) and their adverse effects on the promotion of institutional and administrative change.Practical implications: The research findings underscore the relevance for future studies. They are particularly pertinent in assessing the effects of European integration and administrative change in other EU member statessharing similar historical experiences with Cyprus, such as Greece and Malta.Originality/Significance/Value: This study is innovative in its focus on specific administrative actors in Cyprus whose role has not been examined so far. It sheds light on tangible and intangible factors that may influence the promotion of institutional and administrative change.

All three of the traditionally recognized new institutionalisms – rational choice, historical, and sociological – have increasingly sought to ‘endogenize’ change, which has often meant a turn to ideas and discourse. This article shows that the approaches of scholars coming out of each of these three institutionalist traditions who take ideas and discourse seriously can best be classified as part of a fourth ‘new institutionalism’ – discursive institutionalism (DI) – which is concerned with both the substantive content of ideas and the interactive processes of discourse in institutional context. It argues that this newest of the ‘new institutionalisms’ has the greatest potential for providing insights into the dynamics of institutional change by explaining the actual preferences, strategies, and normative orientations of actors. The article identifies the wide range of approaches that fit this analytic framework, illustrating the ways in which scholars of DI have gone beyond the limits of the traditional institutionalisms on questions of interests and uncertainty, critical junctures and incremental change, norms and culture. It defines institutions dynamically – in contrast to the older neo-institutionalisms’ more static external rule-following structures of incentives, path-dependencies, and cultural framing – as structures and constructs of meaning internal to agents whose ‘background ideational abilities’ enable them to create (and maintain) institutions while their ‘foreground discursive abilities’ enable them to communicate critically about them, to change (or maintain) them. But the article also points to areas for improvement in DI, including the theoretical analysis of processes of ideational change, the use of the older neo-institutionalisms for background information, and the incorporation of the power of interests and position into accounts of the power of ideas and discourse.

This article reviews recent contributions to International Relations (IR) that engage the substantive concerns of historical institutionalism and explicitly and implicitly employ that tradition's analytical features to address fundamental questions in the study of international affairs. It explores the promise of this tradition for new research agendas in the study of international political development, including the origin of state preferences, the nature of governance gaps, and the nature of change and continuity in the international system. The article concludes that the analytical and substantive profiles of historical institutionalism can further disciplinary maturation in IR, and it proposes that the field be more open to the tripartite division of institutional theories found in other subfields of Political Science.

The selection process leading to the appointment of Antonio Guterres as Secretary-General of the United Nations gave way to unprecedented practices in world politics, such as public hearings with candidates. A textbook case of what historical institutionalism calls “layering,” this episode of institutional development features intriguing puzzles, including its timing, form, and limits. Drawing on historical institutionalism and practice theory, I develop a “pulling” theory of agency that complements intentionalist accounts. The webs of practices that agents find themselves in afford certain actions over others, orienting the push of interests. I infer three mechanisms—relational crossover, competence transfers, and pushback—and show how a set of nine practices, available at the UN in 2015–2016 but not in earlier episodes, account for the specifics of the recent renewal of the Secretary-General's selection procedure. A full explanation of this critical case of institutional change is impossible without understanding how agents struggled with one another under the pull of the UN web of practices, affording some innovations but not others.

Recent years have seen a revival of debates about the role of business and the sources of business power in postindustrial political economies. Scholarly accounts commonly distinguish between structural sources of business power, connected to its privileged position in capitalist economies, and instrumental sources, related to direct forms of lobbying by business actors. The authors argue that this distinction overlooks an important third source of business power, which they conceptualize as institutional business power. Institutional business power results when state actors delegate public functions to private business actors. Over time, through policy feedback and lock-in effects, institutional business power contributes to an asymmetrical dependence of the state on the continued commitment of private business actors. This article elaborates the theoretical argument behind this claim, providing empirical examples of growing institutional business power in education in Germany, Sweden, and the United States.

Although civil societies in Central and Eastern Europe are often portrayed as similar, united by a shared communist past, they have developed along increasingly divergent trajectories over the past three decades. This article investigates the current state of civil society in the region and the role the institutional context plays in it. Drawing on historical institutionalism and the process of European integration, we classify the 14 countries under investigation into three distinct groups and analyze data from a survey of more than 350 local civil society experts. We find that, together with domestic governments, international donors and the EU are perceived as the most influential institutional actors for civil society organizations. Their respective influences, however, depend largely on a country’s stage in the EU accession process. Overall, the study provides a differentiated mapping of civil society in this region and a better understanding of how the institutional context relates to a country’s civil society.

PurposeThis research explores how contextual elements and significant events influence the changing storylines within a company's directors' reports spanning a period of six decades. These elements and events encompass the internal dynamics of the family that owns the company, industry-specific advancements, political and socioeconomic climates, and explicit guidelines related to corporate reporting.Design/methodology/approachThis research employs a case study methodology to analyse the directors' reports of Barilla, a prominent Italian food manufacturer, within the theoretical framework of historical institutionalism. A systematic content analysis is conducted on sixty directors' reports published between 1961 and 2021. The study also identifies and examines significant contextual events within this six-decade period, which are linked to four key institutional factors.FindingsBased on the research findings, the directors' reports exhibited notable fluctuations throughout the studied timeframe in reaction to shifts in the institutional setting. Our investigation highlights that each institutional element experienced crucial pivotal moments, and given their interconnected nature, modifications in one factor impacted the others. It was noted that these pivotal moments resulted in alterations in the directors' reports' content across various thematic areas. Additionally, despite Barilla being a multinational company, it was found that national events within Italy had a more pronounced influence on the evolving narratives than global events.Originality/valuePrevious research on directors' reports or chairman's statements has primarily focused on the influence of macro-level institutional factors on the narratives. In contrast, our study considers both macro-level and micro-level institutions, specifically examining the internal events within a family business and how they shape the content of directors' reports. Our study is also distinctive in its analysis of specific critical junctures and their interactions with the investigated institutional factors. Additionally, to the best of our knowledge, few existing studies span a timeframe of sixty years, particularly concerning an Italian company.

International organizations come in many shapes and sizes. Within this institutional gamut, the multipurpose multilateral intergovernmental organization (MMIGO) plays a central role. This institutional form is often traced to the creation of the League of Nations, but in fact the first MMIGO emerged in the Western Hemisphere at the close of the nineteenth century. Originally modeled on a single-issue European public international union, the Commercial Bureau of the American Republics evolved into the multipurpose, multilateral Pan American Union (PAU). Contrary to prominent explanations of institutional genesis, the PAU's design did not result from functional needs nor from the blueprints of a hegemonic power. Advancing a recent synthesis between historical and rational institutionalism, we argue that the first MMIGO arose through a process of compensatory layering: a mechanism whereby a sequence of bargains over control and scope leads to gradual but transformative institutional change. We expect compensatory layering to occur when an organization is focal, power asymmetries among members of that organization are large, and preferences over institutional design diverge. Our empirical and theoretical contributions demonstrate the value a more global international relations (IR) perspective can bring to the study of institutional design. international relations (IR) scholars have long noted that international organizations provide smaller states with voice opportunities; our account suggests those spaces may be of smaller states’ own making.

Rational choice, historical institutionalism and sociological institutionalism are under criticism from a new ‘constructivist institutionalism’ – with critics claiming that established positions cannot explain institutional change effectively, because agents are highly constrained by their institutional environments. These alleged problems in explaining institutional change are exaggerated and can be dealt with by using a suitably tailored historical institutionalism. This places active, interpretive agents at the centre of analysis, in institutional settings modelled as more flexible than those found in ‘sticky’ versions of historical institutionalism. This alternative approach also absorbs core elements of constructivism in explaining institutional change. The article concludes with empirical illustrations, mainly from Australian politics, of the key claims about how agents operate within institutions with ‘bounded discretion’, and how institutional environments can shape and even empower agency in change processes.

Spreading like wildfire, school autonomy with accountability (SAWA) policies have transformed education worldwide. Rooted in new public management, SAWA is a ‘policy bundle’ that links greater decision-making at the school level with standardization and monitoring practices like large-scale assessments and performance indicators. As with every traveling reform, SAWA varies among countries influenced by prior policies, the government’s ideology, and stakeholders’ interests. However, studies often focus on individual elements of the SAWA bundle rather than the complete package. Thus, this paper addresses this gap by analyzing SAWA in Colombia, examining how policy paradigms and institutional legacies have shaped its trajectory – from its adoption to the present. Data combines policy document analysis and interviews with key informants (n = 48). The study shows the 1991–1994 reform period as a critical juncture in Colombia, consolidating a decentralized governance system dominated by a democratic educational paradigm. However, a counter-reform in 2001 produced significant effects under an opposing sign. Eager to recentralize educational political and administrative control, Colombia’s national elites incrementally deployed large-scale assessments, learning standards, and system-wide performance monitoring policies configuring a ‘quality assurance’ SAWA model. While market-like policies incentivizing competition and high-stakes were rapidly abandoned, SAWA policies represent a managerial turn in Colombia’s education.