Institutionalizing Institutionalism: Policy Entrepreneurship and the Wisconsin Industrial Commission, 1905-1920

• In Event: 50220 - Section on Organizations, Occupations, and Work Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (60 minute): Table 7: States and Institutions

Abstract

While institutional formation is clearly a collective process, what role do individuals play in it? How much influence can a small group of purposeful agents have on the creation and evolution of a legalistic, rulebound institution like a government agency? Existing answers to these questions in the sociological and organizational studies literatures are largely either unsatisfactory or incomplete, failing to adequately balance the scales of individual agency and structural determinism in their accounts of the processes that lead to the creation and entrenchment of formal institutions.
Using a case study of labor market institutions created by the Wisconsin Industrial Commission (WIC) between 1905 and 1920, this paper engages the historical institutionalist literature to challenge several of these prevalent accounts of institutional formation, entrenchment and evolution. I argue that two approaches to institutional formation emanating from historical institutionalism—which I dub network-oriented and process-oriented—are both over-socialized and insufficient to explain the dynamics present in Wisconsin during the early years of the twentieth century. I complicate these approaches by showing that we must take seriously the intentions, capacity and agency of individual actors to fully grasp the institutional processes at work in Wisconsin during the early years of the Commission. While collective processes are clearly at work in the creation of a new arm of the state, this case shows how a small group of favorably situated and highly motivated actors can leave a profound mark on the shape and function of even highly complex formal institutions.

Author

• Alexander J. Myers, Washburn University