Path Dependence - History

History

Recent methodological work in comparative politics and sociology has adapted the concept of path dependence into analyses of political and social phenomena. Path dependence has primarily been used in comparative-historical analyses of the development and persistence of institutions, whether they be social, political, or cultural. There are arguably two types of path-dependent processes:

• One is the "critical juncture" framework, most notably utilized by Ruth and David Collier in political science. In the critical juncture, antecedent conditions allow contingent choices that set a specific trajectory of institutional development and consolidation that is difficult to reverse. As in economics, the generic drivers are: lock-in, positive feedback, increasing returns (the more a choice is made the bigger its benefits), and self-reinforcement (which creates forces sustaining the decision).
• The other path-dependent process deals with "reactive sequences" where a primary event sets off a temporally-linked and causally-tight deterministic chain of events that is nearly uninterruptible. These reactive sequences have been used to link the death of Martin Luther King, Jr. with welfare expansion and the industrial revolution in England with the development of the steam engine.

The critical juncture framework has been used to explain the development and persistence of welfare states, labor incorporation in Latin America, and the variations in economic development between countries, among other things. Scholars such as Kathleen Thelen caution that the historical determinism in path-dependent frameworks is subject to constant disruption from institutional evolution.