1.1 Institutions in a Changing World

Institutions provide stability for political affairs, but in a rapidly changing world, we increasingly expect institutions to change in order to cope with new pressures, and even anticipate new challenges. Climate change brings this problem into stark relief, as institutions of domestic and global politics are central for not only enabling wise societal decision-making in the face of unprecedented (and even existential) threat, but are also themselves undermined by the changing circumstances brought about by climate change, which are beginning to reverberate throughout human societies. For example, climate impacts threaten not only lives, infrastructure, and ecosystems but also property rights, social stability, and faith in politics. Elsewhere, institutional shortcomings are also at the center of many other major issues facing societies across the globe, such as migration, economic change, digitization, and aging societies. Altogether, these issues expose weaknesses and failures in contemporary political systems that seem increasingly incapable, and often were simply not built for, the new and emerging pressures they now face. Yet, understanding how political institutions can be reformed, renewed, and reinvented – in other words, “remade” – is a major challenge.

1.2 The Case of Climate Change

In the case of climate change, political institutions are central to addressing and responding to the profound risks posed. Scientists and policymakers argue evermore strongly that societies must embark on major reorganizations – commonly described as “societal transformations” – in order to mitigate and adapt to climate change (IPCC, 2018; NCE, 2018; Reference Patterson, Schulz, Vervoort, van der Hel, Widerberg, Adler, Hurlbert, Anderton, Sethi and BarauPatterson et al., 2017; Reference PellingPelling, 2011; Reference Scoones, Leach and NewellScoones et al., 2015). This is especially vital for constraining temperature rises to globally agreed targets of 1.5–2°C, beyond which unstoppable or runaway climate impacts are likely to be triggered.Footnote ¹ It requires “decarbonizing” systems of production and consumption across all sectors and levels of human activity, and adapting social, political, and economic systems to fundamentally shifting boundary conditions in a climate-changed world. Such transformations may relate to a particular goal (e.g., decarbonization, adaptation), policy sector (e.g., energy, mobility, water, food, built environment), or aspect of society (e.g., technology, economy, culture). As climate change impacts grow in magnitude and severity across the globe, these impacts themselves are likely to become a structural cause of transformation in human societies, at the same time as being driven by human societies. This leads to a curious situation where societal transformation is now bound to occur one way or another: Either transformation is pursued intentionally in order to limit and curtail climate change or transformation is forced on societies as a result of failing to limit climate change with profound disruption triggered as a result (Reference Fazey, Moug, Allen, Beckmann, Blackwood, Bonaventura, Burnett, Danson, Falconer, Gagnon, Harkness, Hodgson, Holm, Irvine, Low, Lyon, Moss, Moran, Naylor, O’Brien, Russell, Skerratt, Rao-Williams and WolstenholmeFazey et al., 2018).

However, while intentional transformations are urgently called for,Footnote ² understanding how they may come about – beginning from the imperfect conditions of the present and in the face of often intense contestation – is deeply challenging. Among scholars, the focus so far has mostly been either, on the one hand, describing problems and the need for transformation or, on the other hand, advocating normative visions for a sustainable future. However, the processes of change by which such transformations could actually be realized remain vastly under-theorized, a gap that is especially significant for institutions given their central role in structuring political decision-making.

The problem structure of climate change creates a vexing political challenge. The diffuse nature of climate change impacts across societies and over time, as well as the dilemma that rapid and ambitious climate action requires societies to accept concentrated costs now in exchange for avoiding uncertain and dispersed costs in the future, has proven to be a critical barrier to domestic climate change action over decades (Reference JacobsJacobs, 2016; Reference StokesStokes, 2016; Reference VictorVictor, 2011). Crucially, this is not just a question of aggregate interests, preferences, and social choice. It is also rooted more fundamentally in the political institutions that structure and channel political decision-making. Political institutions that are implicated include not only those specifically concerned with climate change governance but also broader political institutions that influence social choices about climate change. The resulting sets of incentives/sanctions, norms/goals, and practices/behaviors cultivated by political institutions shape the ways in which societies make decisions and conduct climate action.

Realizing societal transformations under climate change, therefore, involves changes in political institutions in response to, as well as in anticipation of, climate change destabilization. For example, Reference Hausknost and HammondHausknost and Hammond (2020, p. 4) argue that “a rapid, purposeful, and comprehensive decarbonization of modern society without the force of law and without adequate institutions of deliberation, will-formation, decision-making, policy coordination, and enforcement seems highly unlikely.” Changes in political institutions are needed in three key areas:

1. 1. Political institutions in a given society need to adapt to changing circumstances, including material-environmental boundary conditions and their related social, economic, and geopolitical impacts.

2. 2. “Specific” political institutions of climate change governance (e.g., policies, programs, law/regulation) need to support anticipatory climate action that is rapid and ambitious.

3. 3. “General” political institutions (e.g., policy-making processes, legislatures, systems of representation and deliberation, authorities, constitutions) need to support long-term decision-making capable of addressing systemic challenges and avoiding short-termism.

The first point concerns primarily reactive changes to develop institutions that are fit for purpose within profoundly changing circumstances. The second and third points concern anticipatory changes to develop institutions that are fit for navigating the future. The key question, of course, is how such changes can be realized.

1.3 “Remaking” Institutions

The need to remake institutions in a rapidly changing world is a core challenge for contemporary governance. For example, Reference BusbyBusby (2018) observes that “the world seems to be in state of permanent crisis,” which brings issues of institutional weakness and failure to the forefront of debates about how societies may cope with ongoing disruption. Yet, while institutional shortcomings are increasingly identified, scholars and policymakers alike seem equally puzzled about how solutions may be found and realized.

Climate change impacts are already occurring with increasing intensity and frequency,Footnote ³ including extreme floods, droughts and hurricanes, more severe and widespread wildfires, and rapidly melting glaciers in mountain regions across the globe. Yet climate change governance, both domestically and globally, remains sluggish. Second-order pressures on institutions are also likely due to destabilization of societal and political systems, such as in regard to loss of property rights (Reference Freudenberger and MillerFreudenberger and Miller, 2010; Reference McGuire, Zavattaro, Peterson and DavisMcGuire, 2019), impacts on health (Reference Sellers, Ebi and HessSellers et al., 2019; Reference Whitmee, Haines, Beyrer, Boltz, Capon, de Souza Dias, Ezeh, Frumkin, Gong, Head, Horton, Mace, Marten, Myers, Nishtar, Osofsky, Pattanayak, Pongsiri, Romanelli, Soucat, Vega and YachWhitmee et al., 2015), disrupted global supply chains (Reference Ghadge, Wurtmann and SeuringGhadge et al., 2020), forced migration (Reference Berchin, Valduga and GarciaBerchin et al., 2017), contribution to intra- or inter-state conflict (Reference Devlin and HendrixDevlin and Hendrix, 2014; Reference GleickGleick, 2014; Reference Nardulli, Peyton and BajjaliehNardulli et al., 2015), impacts on access to food (Reference Ericksen, Ingram and LivermanEricksen et al., 2009), new geopolitical tensions (Reference BusbyBusby, 2018; Reference Hommel and MurphyHommel and Murphy, 2013), and even an erosion of trust by citizens in democratic political systems themselves due to the failure of governments to tackle climate change over many years (Reference Brown, Adger and CinnerBrown et al., 2019).

Institutional challenges also abound beyond climate change. For example, irregular migration has tested global systems of migration and human rights protections in recent years, as global conflicts and/or repressive regimes have triggered waves of refugee movements, with sometimes volatile political reactions such as rising populist sentiments. In Europe, for example, current arrangements allocating responsibility for sharing refugee arrivals are tenuous, and further stresses (including as a result of climate impacts) could be untenable (Reference Werz and HoffmanWerz and Hoffman, 2016). More broadly, economic insecurity of citizens is a growing source of anxiety in many countries, linked to both domestic economic policies and global economic changes, such as economic restructuring over decades under globalization (e.g., offshoring of jobs, deindustrialization, automation), raising questions about the durability of labor and social welfare institutions (Reference BregmanBregman, 2018; Reference WrightWright, 2010). Additionally, aging societies create large slow-moving future challenges with growing mismatches between state pension liabilities and the productive base of workers needed to sustain them, especially in many industrialized countries, which has implications for social security and healthcare institutions (Reference BloomBloom, 2019; Reference de Mooijde Mooij, 2006). Together, this indicates a critical need to understand how institutions in many areas of political affairs can be intentionally remade over the coming years and decades.

Yet, while institutional solutions are needed for many problems, exactly how such solutions can be realized in practice – even when prescribed – is not well understood. Most broadly, institutions refer to “the rules of the game in a society”Footnote ⁴ (Reference NorthNorth, 2010, p. 3), “established and prevalent social rules that structure social interactions” (Reference HodgsonHodgson, 2006, p. 2), or “persistent rules that shape, limit, and channel human behavior” (Reference FukuyamaFukuyama, 2014, p. 6). More specifically, institutions are defined as “clusters of rights, rules and decision-making procedures that give rise to social practices, assign roles to the participants in these practices, and guide interactions among occupants of these roles” (Reference Young, King and SchroederYoung et al., 2008, p. xxii). In other words, institutions refer to the rules mediating interactions among actors in a given decision-making arena,Footnote ⁵ including both formal and informal aspects (Reference OstromOstrom, 2005). Importantly, such rules are not solely instrumental but are also “embedded in structures of meaning” (Reference March, Olsen, Rhodes, Binder and RockmanMarch and Olsen, 2008, p. 3) and communication (Reference Patterson, Betsill, Gerlak and BenneyBeunen and Patterson, 2019; Reference SchmidtSchmidt, 2008). Hence, cultures, routines, and habits also matter (Reference HodgsonHodgson, 2006; Reference March and OlsenMarch and Olsen, 1983). The overall effect of political institutions is to channel individual and collective agency of social actors, and structure procedures of political decision-making. However, institutions are typically understood to be complex, persistent, and difficult to intentionally change. Indeed, by definition, institutions provide stability and emerge from past circumstances, which make them inherently conservative.

What does this mean for remaking institutions to address climate change and other twenty-first-century governance problems? First, it is important to note that intentional action to remake institutions may be pursued at different levels of institutional order.Footnote ⁶ This can include a programmatic level (e.g., policies, plans, agreements), a legislative level (e.g., laws, regulations), and a “constitutional” level (e.g., formal constitutions, courts, electoral and representative systems, fundamental political norms) (following Reference OstromOstrom, 2005; Reference Rhodes, Binder and RockmanRhodes et al., 2008). Action at each respective level may be more or less readily achievable: Programmatic actions are typically easier to realize than legislative action, whereas constitutional action is typically difficult and rare. Changes at each level may also proceed over differing timescales (e.g., years, decades, several decades). Second, attempts to realize intentional institutional change are not only instrumental but also normative and communicative. For example, political justifications, argumentation and legitimation (Reference BeethamBeetham, 2013), and buy-in between rule takers and rule enforcers are vital for securing durable changes. Third, institutions are connected to other aspects of society, such as behaviors and practices of social actors, and materiality of technologies and infrastructures (Reference Seto, Davis, Mitchell, Stokes, Unruh and Ürge-VorsatzSeto et al., 2016). For example, Reference Bernstein, Hoffmann, Jordan, Huitema, van Asselt and ForsterBernstein and Hoffman (2018a, p. 248) point out that decarbonization (i.e., the removal of fossil fuels from all systems within society) confronts the problem of “carbon lock-in,” which “arises from overlapping technical, political, social, and economic dynamics that generate continuing and taken-for-granted use of fossil energy.” Hence, attempts to intentionally change institutions, even when geared toward solving pressing societal problems such as climate change, inevitably involve political contestation and struggle in heterogeneous societies where different social actors hold varying preferences, interests, values, and worldviews. Consequently, for socio-technical shifts such as decarbonization, the ways in which new systems come to be adopted depends on “how they are assembled and congealed through particular arrangements” (Reference Stripple and BulkeleyStripple and Bulkeley, 2019, p. 54), in other words, institutions.

1.4 Domestic Political Sphere

The domestic political sphere (encompassing national, subnational, and local climate action) is crucial to realizing societal transformations to meet global climate targets. Current global climate policy relies on nations delivering on their commitments made under the 2015 Paris Agreement. Under this agreement, nations are expected to set commitments and undergo reviews on a cyclical basis, to support progressive ratcheting up of ambitions over time, while allowing scrutiny from other nations and civil society along the way (Reference FalknerFalkner, 2016). Consequently, the success of global climate action now depends on robust action in the domestic political sphere to translate global commitments, navigate complex societal changes, and advance ambitious climate action.Footnote ⁷ At the same time, the domestic sphere is where climate policies are most directly enacted but also challenged. For example, climate policies may be accepted by societies, but they also may face intense resistance or even backlash (e.g., undermining or repealing of policy, institutional dismantling, social protests, and resistance). Importantly, the domestic (sovereign) sphere is where the authority and capability for remaking many political institutions are ultimately grounded.

Institutional remaking already occurs, or is at least debated, in a variety of ways in domestic politics. Examples include the creation of comprehensive policy frameworks (e.g., measures to structurally support the uptake of renewable energy) (Reference BuchanBuchan, 2012), regulation to steer public and private choices (e.g., planning and zoning, building standards, vehicle emissions standards) (Reference SachsSachs, 2012), sectoral and society-wide legislation (e.g., climate change acts, legislated targets for decarbonization, ratification of national emissions reduction commitments) (Reference Lorenzoni and BensonLorenzoni and Benson, 2014), creation of new authorities (e.g., agencies/departments, coordination bodies, independent advisory agencies) (Reference Lorenzoni and BensonLorenzoni and Benson, 2014; Reference Patterson, Voogt and SapiainsPatterson et al., 2019), economic restructuring (e.g., active investment policies, removal of fossil fuel subsidies)Footnote ⁸ (Reference Brown and GranoffBrown and Granoff, 2018), experimentation with new forms of decision-making (e.g., deliberative forums) (Reference Dryzek, Bowman, Kuyper, Pickering, Sass and StevensonDryzek et al., 2019), and the emergence of climate litigation and its institutional consequences (Reference Peel and OsofskyPeel and Osofsky, 2018; Reference SharpSharp, 2019). These changes span the three imperatives for remaking institutions under climate that were identified in Section 1.1 (i.e., adapting to changing structural conditions, supporting ambitious climate action, and encouraging comprehensive and long-term political decision-making).

More broadly, intentional efforts to “remake institutions” can also be seen in other domains of political life, both past and present. For example, economic liberalization has been pursued through domestic and global policies over several decades, and domestic spheres have in turn been reshaped by the resulting forces of globalization. Labor, social welfare, agriculture and tax policies have been other major areas of reform and restructuring over recent decades. Democratization has also occurred in a variety of countries (e.g., post-soviet, post-dictatorship, post-conflict). All these changes involve intentional activities to remake political institutions. So far, profound reforms have largely not been emulated for climate change, where institutional remaking has remained relatively nascent. Yet climate change differs from previous analogues because it, at least so far, lacks a singular normative objective which a durable majority of social actors buy into (e.g., as for democratization or liberalization), and it is also highly open-ended without a clear end point for reforms. Lessons from the study of policy reform are also instructive. In examining the post-adoption politics of policy reforms, Reference PatashnikPatashnik (2014) argues that “the passage of a reform does not settle anything” and the “sustainability of reforms turns on the reconfiguration of political dynamics” (p. 3, emphases in original). Hence, contestation is central to both introducing but also embedding institutional changes over time. This brings attention to the provisional and indeterminate character of institutional change, and the ongoing political struggles that it entails.

1.5 Focus of This Element

This Element investigates the political dynamics that occur during attempts to remake political institutions, through considering multiple coexisting “areas of institutional production.” This begins with viewing institutional intervention as an ongoing political activity, rather than a once-off intervention moment (especially under climate change), which has several implications. First, political institutions act as distributional instruments which generate sites of contestation, leading to a focus on “rule-making” rather than only “rule-taking.”Footnote ⁹ Second, institutional remaking is an unfolding process, which may often lack a clear start and end point (e.g., end states are not necessarily known a priori), which implies a need for studying unfolding processes rather than snapshots. Third, given its provisional and indeterminate nature, evaluation of the “success” of institutional remaking at any given moment must recognize partial and incomplete outcomes.

Most broadly, this Element contributes to understanding how societies pursue and realize societal transformations through choice rather than collapse. In other words, how can solutions to institutional problems be found proactively without waiting for catastrophic failure? The problem of climate change is unprecedented in this regard.Footnote ¹⁰ It demands that societies act in anticipatory ways to take account of systemic, irreversible, and largely future impacts, which extend far beyond any single existing polity. As prominent institutional scholars Reference March, Olsen, Rhodes, Binder and RockmanMarch and Olsen (2008, p. 12) observe: “In spite of accounts of the role of heroic founders and constitutional moments, modern democracies also seem to have limited capacity for institutional design and reform and in particular for achieving intended effects of reorganizations.” Consequently, “we know a lot about polities but not how to fix them” (Reference NorthNorth, 2010, p. 67). Yet the importance and urgency of addressing climate change can hardly be overstated. Decisions made now are immensely consequential for the future, in a way that overwhelms existing political institutions and defies easy analogy. The challenge of remaking political institutions is both instrumentally and normatively significant. The overall motivation and theoretical terrain for studying institutional remaking, with a focus here on climate change, are shown in Figure 1.

Figure 1

Situating the theoretical challenge of remaking institutions under climate change

Theoretically, we have rich repertoire of institutional theory to draw on, including a growing range of approaches for explaining institutional change. Nevertheless, our understanding of how institutions can be intentionally remade remains opaque. Institutional theory is typically backward looking as it focuses on explaining past changes (e.g., comparative historical analysis). There is often also a mismatch between narrow empirical explanations (e.g., focusing on single rules) and the reality of institutional multiplicity within real-world decision-making arenas (i.e., complex clusters of rules). Scholars now need to engage with theorizing how institutional solutions are, or could be, enacted within complex and nonideal real-world settings.

To this end, the departure point for the approach developed here combines: (i) a meso-level scalar focus, (ii) a social production ontology, and (iii) a prospective temporal orientation (Figure 2).

Figure 2

Analytical positioning of the approach to studying institutional remaking

First, a meso-level scalar focus refers to concern for rule clusters structuring collective decision-making arenas, over timeframes of several years to a decade. It contrasts against a micro-level perspective focusing on the dynamics of individual social actors operating on a day-to-day timeframe and a macro-level perspective focusing on large institutional changes over decadal timeframes; yet it nonetheless recognizes the influence of both micro- and macro-level forces. Micro-level forces (such as change agents) and macro-level forces (such as overarching political structures and paradigms) may both influence meso-level institutional remaking. A meso-level perspective also focuses on institutions and their interactions with human-technological-ecological systems within a polity that has the ability to reshape these institutions to some meaningful extent. For example, such a polity may be delineated at the level of a city, state/province, or a nation. Overall, this challenges us to focus on change in aggregate rule clusters linked to a particular issue.

Second, a social production ontology focuses on the activities through which social actionFootnote ¹¹ is generated in attempts to address a specific problem. In other words, it locates the analytical challenge at hand as one of understanding how, why, and under which conditions institutional remaking occurs. The notion of social production has been described in urban governance literature as “the power to accomplish tasks” (Reference Mossberger and StokerMossberger and Stoker, 2001, p. 829), where “the power struggle concerns, not control and resistance, but gaining and fusing a capacity to act – power to, not power over” (Reference StoneStone, 1989, cited in Reference Stoker and MossbergerStoker and Mossberger 1994, p. 197). Hence this perspective reflects a conception of power as generative. Reference PartzschPartzsch (2017) identifies three ideal-type conceptions of power in sustainability transformations: “power with” (cooperation, learning, coaction), “power over” (coercion, manipulation, domination), and “power to” (resistance, empowerment, potential for action by certain agents). A social production perspective mainly aligns with a conception of “power to,” as it aims to understand processes of action and change (including resistance).

Third, a prospective temporal orientation refers to a focus on unfolding changes (i.e., both those that are “in-the-making” and those that “could be”) and how their future form is shaped by actions in the present. This includes understanding contemporary and past dynamics, which set certain trajectories of change in motion and/or constrain the potential for future changes. Such a perspective challenges institutional scholars to think about how it may be possible to prospectively address complex societal problems. This is vital for understanding how social and political changes, and ultimately transformations, might come about in practice. Crucially, this is not about advocacy, but about analytically understanding how a particular institutional change deemed desirable by certain social actors might be realized. If elucidating the nature and effects of institutions is a “first order” problem and explaining institutional change is a “second order” problem (following Reference Hall, Mahoney and ThelenHall, 2010), then understanding prospective institutional improvement might usefully be seen as a “third order” problem for institutional scholarship.

From this tripartite starting point, this Element develops an original approach to understanding how political systems can move beyond institutional failure in turbulent but gridlocked contemporary governance contexts. It develops an analytical foundation for studying institutional remaking and its political dynamics, including (i) an evaluation frame to observe institutional remaking and (ii) a heuristic typology comprising multiple key areas of institutional production expected to occur within processes of institutional remaking (i.e., novelty, uptake, dismantling, stability, and interplay). The approach draws on scholarship from political science, environmental studies, and sociology, and fields of research spanning institutional analysis, environmental governance, and sustainability transformations. Altogether, this opens up a new research agenda on the politics of responding to institutional breakdown, to support scholars in finding institutional solutions to contemporary governance problems. It also brings sustainability scholarship into closer dialogue with broader lines of thinking about processes of institutional change and development.

1.6 Overall Argument

The overall argument of this Element is that we need to better understand the processes by which political institutions are remade vis-à-vis weaknesses and failures in order to address many urgent challenges such as climate change. A key challenge is to probe prospective institutional development in order to not only explain (past) political change, but also to contribute to finding constructive (future) solutions to real-world problems. Political science typically focuses on explaining changes which have already occurred, rather than considering how future changes (and especially improvements, however conceived) might, or could, come about.Footnote ¹² To engage with future developments often invokes ideas about design, foresight, and anticipation which – while practically useful and theoretically rich – tend to view the future through a metaphor of pathways to be pursued or avoided, arguably implying undue consensus and knowability. An alternative approach, as developed here, is to focus on the production of social action in the present, situated within a broader historical trajectory of past experience and future possibility, anchored in unfolding activities that shape the form and directionality of future outcomes.

This locates the problem of institutional remaking as one of understanding how intentional intervention is generated through interactions among a multiplicity of actors within complex institutional arenas. Institutional remaking involves political jockeying and struggle and is entangled with heterogeneous societies, material infrastructures, and changing environmental conditions. Studying it involves grappling with unfolding processes and partial outcomes; accepting that it is, in the fullest sense,Footnote ¹³ ongoing and in-the-making rather than a discrete event. This may be uncomfortable analytical territory for scholars seeking bounded, testable short-term relations. However, there is no inherent reason why institutional remaking cannot be studied from a variety of methodological standpoints, leaning toward theory-testing or theory-building, qualitative/interpretive or quantitative/objective analysis, and exploratory or explanatory reasoning. But to begin with, we must first develop a robust analytical foundation, which is the task of this Element.

The structure of the argument is as follows. Section 1 introduces the notion of institutional remaking and the need for it, both in regard to climate change and more broadly, and outlines key starting points for the argument. Section 2 elucidates pressures on institutions along with barriers to change and synthesizes current thinking about how and why institutional change occurs, which highlights the need for a focus on institutional remaking. Section 3 defines and delineates institutional remaking, situating it as a processual phenomenon, and reflecting on the role of intentionality and how this differs compared to institutional design. Section 4 develops a comprehensive frame for observing and evaluating institutional remaking. Section 5 develops a heuristic typology comprising five key areas of institutional production that are expected to play out during processes of institutional remaking, drawing on both sustainability governance and institutional theory. Section 6 identifies insights about processes of intentional institutional change, contributions to broader institutional theory, and research priorities. Section 7 concludes with distilling the overall contributions of the argument.

2.1 Pressures on Contemporary Institutions

The problem of institutional weakness and/or failure, on climate change as well as a range of other issues, is a core motivation for studying institutional remaking. Here, institutional weakness and/or failure refers to the inadequate performance of actually existing institutions for addressing a certain issue confronting society. For example, in environmental governance, Reference Newig, Derwort and JagerNewig et al. (2019) identify empirical examples of institutional failure including institutional deficiencies contributing to environmental pollution incidents, costly performance of endangered species legislation, and inadequacy for decarbonizing electricity production. In the context of political decentralization reform, Reference Koelble and SiddleKoelble and Siddle (2014) identify examples of institutional failure such as lacking municipal service delivery and democratic deficit due to mismatched municipal capacity. More broadly, Reference PetersPeters (2015) identifies governance failures characterized by poor cooperation either among political elites or between bureaucracies, particularly in the face of issues that are sectorally crosscutting, long term, and/or containing entrenched ideological aspects, which result in “either limited governance outputs, or outputs that are incapable of addressing more than a portion of the problem confronting the public sector and the society” (pp. 263–264). Reference Prakash and PotoskiPrakash and Potoski (2016, pp. 118–120) classify several types of institutional failure: failures of design (where the initial setup is unsuitable to regulate the problem), mismatch and obsolescence (where new or altered actors evade existing regulation), failure to adapt (where institutions remain too static over time), and capture (where certain actors gain undue influence over regulation).

Yet a variety of contemporary pressures on political institutions suggest that these risks are unlikely to dissipate anytime soon and in fact are only likely to grow. Such pressures include political stagnation, shifting environmental boundary conditions, and burgeoning societal heterogeneity.

First, scholars highlight worrying patterns of political stagnation in recent years. This is described in a variety of ways, including as gridlock and political decay. For example, at a global level, scholars observe gridlock on a variety of transborder problems (e.g., climate change, trade, finance) hindering global problem-solving (Reference Hale, Held and YoungHale et al., 2013). At a domestic level, the historical development of core political institutions now points toward decay in some countries such as the United States linked to fragmentation, polarization, and abundant opportunities for veto, calling into question the ability of such systems to function effectively (Reference FukuyamaFukuyama, 2014). Furthermore, rising populism in many countries in recent years (e.g., Reference Norris and InglehartNorris and Inglehart, 2019; Reference Schaller and CariusSchaller and Carius, 2019) has implications for climate change. For example, critiques of cosmopolitanism may make it harder to generate public support for ambitious climate action since benefits are questioned, and due to a lack of trust that other countries are also taking commensurate action, even despite the presence of the Paris Agreement as a global coordination arrangement. On the other hand, lack of climate action could erode trust in democratic political systems over time, due to failure of governments to meaningfully address climate change (Reference Brown, Adger and CinnerBrown et al., 2019).

Second, the impacts of climate change are many and varied across global and local geographies, including exposure to climate disasters (e.g., droughts, floods, wildfires, heatwaves) and long-term climate shifts (e.g., changing patterns of rainfall, sea level, and temperatures), and their interaction with human systems (e.g., cities, agriculture, infrastructures). These changes are ongoing and nonlinear. Seemingly small changes may produce large effects (e.g., small changes in atmospheric moisture may have major impacts on the likelihood of floods or droughts). Altogether, this results in shifting environmental boundary conditions for human societies, a problem that has been labelled “nonstationarity.” Nonstationarity refers to underlying shifts in long-term climate patterns (i.e., mean, variance), which implies that expected conditions upon which political institutions have developed over decades, and even centuries, no longer apply (Reference CraigCraig, 2010; Reference Milly, Betancourt, Falkenmark, Hirsch, Kundzewicz, Lettenmaier and StoufferMilly et al., 2008). Political institutions linked to the production and distribution of resources and even basic rights are threatened. For example, property rights may become devalued or untenable (e.g., water, land, infrastructures) (Reference Freudenberger and MillerFreudenberger and Miller, 2010; Reference McGuire, Zavattaro, Peterson and DavisMcGuire, 2019). Implications for political stability are unknown and undoubtably troubling.

Third, societal heterogeneity in contemporary human societies (e.g., in terms of interests, preferences, beliefs, values) deeply challenges the ability of political systems to respond to complex problems such as climate change. Diverging political demands and reactions to policy proposals, and fragmented and polarized public opinion make far-sighted political renewal seem almost like an anachronism in contemporary politics. At the same time, governance itself becomes increasingly multiple. For example, there are now a wide range of non-state and subnational actors involved in climate change governance across domestic, transnational, and global spheres (Reference AbbottAbbott, 2012; Reference Bulkeley, Andonova, Betsill, Compagnon, Hale, Hoffman, Newell, Paterson, Roger and VandeveerBulkeley et al., 2014; Reference Chan, van Asselt, Hale, Abbott, Beisheim, Hoffmann, Guy, Höhne, Hsu, Pattberg, Pauw, Ramstein and WiderbergChan et al., 2015; Reference HaleHale, 2016). Some lines of thinking emphasize difficulties of fragmentation that can result (Reference Biermann, Pattberg, van Asselt and ZelliBiermann et al., 2009; Reference Zelli and van AsseltZelli and van Asselt, 2013). On the other hand, scholars within a pluralist tradition view heterogeneity as a social fact (Reference AligicaAligica, 2014). In this line, the notion of polycentricity has been taken up recently to try to make sense of dispersed centers of authority in climate change governance (Reference Jordan, Huitema, van Asselt and ForsterJordan et al., 2018). Such a view would suggest that institutions are potentially remade in diverse and interdependent ways within complex institutional arenas. Yet it also raises questions about the performance of institutions “in an increasingly interdependent world of diverse and conflicting views, beliefs, preferences, values, and objectives” (Reference AligicaAligica, 2014, p. xiv).

2.2 Barriers to Institutional Change

Despite the pressures identified in Section 2.1, institutions are unlikely to adjust automatically to new circumstances and objectives. Institutions are embedded in historical, political, cultural, and material/environmental settings. The weight of the past constrains change because patterns of coordination in political systems tend to persist over time. Institutional change is also typically contested and may be driven by endogenous actors (Reference Mahoney and ThelenMahoney and Thelen, 2010), rapid and slow-moving external forces (Reference PiersonPierson, 2004), and friction with neighboring institutional orders (Reference Orren and SkowronekOrren and Skowronek, 1996). As a result, a variety of barriers to institutional change arise, including path dependency, inefficiency, materiality, and opportunity structures (Table 1). Sustainability scholars typically emphasize path dependency and materiality, while institutional scholars typically emphasize path dependency, inefficiency, and opportunity structures. Climate change brings all four into focus.

Perhaps the most commonly cited reason for a lack of institutional adjustment is that of path dependency. This explains how existing institutions contribute to creating incentive and payoff structures that tend to reinforce and perpetuate their own existence; societal actors reconfigure their expectations and capabilities and become invested due to accumulating benefits over time (Reference PiersonPierson, 2004). This creates a dynamic of “increasing returns” where benefits accumulate to actors who are already set up to take advantage of existing arrangements, the costs of switching paths are relatively high, and, therefore, early departure points have persistent consequences down the line (Reference PiersonPierson, 2000a). The reasons why this is difficult to overcome include coordination challenges for those defecting from the existing setup, veto points available at a more fundamental level than the particular arena in question, and commitments built up over time in relation to the current setup such as “relationships, expectations, privileges, knowledge of procedures” (Reference PiersonPierson, 2004, pp. 142–148). Yet, at the same time, the inherent “stickiness” conferred by institutions is helpful to social actors because it allows to “reduce uncertainty and enhance stability, facilitating forms of cooperation and exchange that would otherwise be impossible” (Reference PiersonPierson, 2004, p. 43). Thus, path dependency “is not a story of inevitability in which the past neatly predicts the future” (Reference PiersonPierson, 2004, p. 52) and “is not ‘inertia’, rather it is the constraints on the choice set in the present that are derived from historical experiences of the past” (Reference NorthNorth, 2010, p. 52). But altogether, it leads to strong commitments and incentives, especially among incumbent actors, to maintain the status quo.

In the face of path dependency, sustainability scholars often point to the potential for institutional change through mechanisms of competition, learning, and adaptation. However, these mechanisms have all been critiqued as weak in practice for various reasons. Competition is typically assumed to occur within and between decision-making arenas (e.g., cities, nations) over approaches to responding to climate change, a view that is rooted in an evolutionary economics frame. However, political institutions are rarely subject to competition in a classical sense since they “often have a monopoly over a particular part of the political terrain” (Reference PiersonPierson, 2000b, p. 488). Learning is typically assumed to occur within and between decision-making arenas through direct experience (e.g., climate change impacts, changes understood to be needed) or indirect experiences (e.g., observing other decision-making arenas), a view rooted in a sociological frame of interactive social action. However, the relation between new ideas (stemming from learning) and institutional change is not direct (Reference HallHall, 1993), and therefore learning is not synonymous with actual changes in governance but should be seen as a separate step (Reference PiersonPierson, 2000b, p. 490). Adaptation is typically assumed to occur when faced with changing circumstances (e.g., experienced or expected climate change impacts), a view rooted partly in a frame of rational response to problems, but also partly in a complexity frame that emphasizes the need for continuous adaptability within dynamic circumstances. However, there is no guarantee that actors will want to adjust to changing circumstances, especially when uncertainties or ambiguities afford cover for retaining existing political positions. Moreover, “because political reality is so complex and the tasks of evaluating public performance and determining which options would be superior are so formidable, such self-correction is often limited” (Reference PiersonPierson, 2000b, p. 490). Altogether, these inefficiencies mean that institutions do not automatically adjust to changing circumstances or societal objectives.

Sustainability scholars emphasize how institutions are closely bound up in assemblages comprising environments, infrastructure/technology, and practices/behaviors. For example, Reference YoungYoung (2010a) examines the dynamics of international environmental regimes from the perspective of interactions between endogenous factors and exogenous biophysical and socioeconomic factors, emphasizing their combined role in explaining regime performance. Reference OstromOstrom (2005, Reference Ostrom1990) famously developed a view of institutions as inherently bound up with environmental and social conditions, making clear the need to analyze these dimensions as a package. Elsewhere, the field of sustainability transitions is premised on inseparable links between people, infrastructures, and institutions. For example, Reference Andrews-SpeedAndrews-Speed (2016, p. 217) suggests that “the energy sector can be envisaged as a particular type of socio-technical regime comprising an assemblage of institutions which develop around a particular set of technologies and support the development and use of those technologies,” and Reference Stripple and BulkeleyStripple and Bulkeley (2019, p. 52) argue that “decarbonisation politics are socio-materially constituted.” Indeed, this is an area in which sustainability scholarship enriches broader institutional theory, which often tends to underplay the causal connections between institutions and their material/environmental context by focusing primarily on political and historical explanatory factors. Crucially, what this means is that institutions can be subject to “lock-in,” not only for endogenous reasons (such as path dependency and inefficient adjustment), but also because of relations with broader environmental-social-material factors (Reference Monstadt and WolffMonstadt and Wolff, 2015; Reference Seto, Davis, Mitchell, Stokes, Unruh and Ürge-VorsatzSeto et al., 2016; Reference UnruhUnruh, 2000).

Opportunities for institutional change are typically heterogeneous and ephemeral because of changes in the exogenous context, differences across levels of institutional order, and endogenous dynamism within institutions themselves. Abrupt changes in the exogenous context can impact an institution, as in the famous punctuated equilibrium model whereby radical institutional change occurs due to an exogenous shock (Reference Baumgartner and JonesBaumgartner and Jones, 2009). Related to this is the notion of a “window of opportunity” for intentional institutional change, which could be a shock or simply other political factors such as electoral cycles, changes in discourse, public mood, and domestic and international events that create moments of attention (Reference SabatierSabatier, 2007). On the other hand, changes in context can also occur gradually, leading to slow-moving shifts, which may not appear to be causally significant for long stretches of time until a threshold is reached where a seemingly sudden effect appears (Reference PiersonPierson, 2004), for example, socioeconomic or demographic changes that play out over long timeframes leading to changes in political constituencies and preferences. Across levels of institutional order (e.g., programmatic, legislative, constitutional) institutions are likely to show different degrees of durability and persistence over time (Section 1.3). For example, programmatic institutions may permit change over relatively short timeframes (e.g., several years), legislative institutions may permit change over longer timeframes (e.g., years to decades), and constitutional institutions may only permit change over even longer timeframes (e.g., decades to centuries). Moreover, rules at one level can be seen as “nested” in deeper rules (Reference OstromOstrom, 2005), which means that veto points or other forces of stability may be present at a deeper level than the level at which a particular change is sought. Yet scholars have recently argued that there is often much endogenous dynamism within institutions, which may not be immediately obvious, but which may permit ongoing gradual changes (Reference Mahoney and ThelenMahoney and Thelen, 2010). Yet this by no means implies complete flexibility for endogenous actors to reshape institutions, and they will often still be highly constrained. Altogether, this implies that even when subjected to pressures (Section 2.1), there are many reasons why institutions do not necessarily adjust accordingly.

2.3 Existing Theory on Institutional Change

Even though pressures on institutions do not automatically lead to institutional change, institutions do still change, sometimes intentionally and sometimes unintentionally. Indeed, the topic of institutional change has become prominent in recent years among not only institutional scholars (e.g., Reference Mahoney and ThelenMahoney and Thelen, 2010; Reference Streeck and ThelenStreeck and Thelen, 2005), but also sustainability scholars (Reference Patterson, Betsill, Gerlak and BenneyBeunen and Patterson, 2019; Reference Lorenzoni and BensonLorenzoni and Benson, 2014; Reference Patterson, Voogt and SapiainsPatterson et al., 2019; Reference YoungYoung, 2010a). Therefore, in building a foundation for studying how institutions can be remade, it is important to first interrogate what is known about institutional change and its mechanisms more generally.

When examining institutional change, scholars commonly look to agency-structure interplay, that is, the ways in which certain actors exert influence on institutional structures, and the ways in which institutional structures shape and condition the actions of agents. Indeed, Reference GoodinGoodin (1998) argues that the core argument of the overall “new institutionalist” paradigm, which emerged from approximately the 1980s onward in reaction to a behavioral paradigm,Footnote ¹⁴ is essentially “the recognition of the need to blend both agency and structure in any plausibly comprehensive explanation of social outcomes.” This overall new institutionalist paradigm continues as the foundation of contemporary institutional analysis, albeit in a variety of guises emphasizing different causal features (e.g., rational choice, historical, sociological, discursive variants), both in political science generally (e.g., Reference Hall, Mahoney and ThelenHall, 2010; Reference Hall and TaylorHall and Taylor, 1996) and in sustainability (e.g., Reference Betsill, Benney and GerlakBetsill et al., 2020; Reference Patterson, Betsill, Gerlak and BenneyBeunen and Patterson, 2019; Reference Burch, Gupta, Inoue, Kalfagianni, Persson, Gerlak, Ishii, Patterson, Pickering, Scobie, Van der Heijden, Vervoort, Adler, Bloomfield, Djalante, Dryzek, Galaz, Gordon, Harmon, Jinnah, Kim, Olsson, Van Leeuwen, Ramasar, Wapner and ZondervanBurch et al., 2019; Reference Young, King and SchroederYoung et al., 2008). These various traditions suggest a variety of ways in which institutional change might occur (Table 2).

Of central importance across these traditions is the ways in which agents are presumed to behave. Historical institutionalism emphasizes contestation and conflict linked to power struggles, rational choice institutionalism emphasizes strategic behavior and coordination linked to calculation around self-interest, sociological institutionalism emphasizes culturally appropriate behavior linked to norms and practices, and discursive institutionalism emphasizes communicative behavior linked to reflexivity and deliberation. When it comes to thinking about attempts to (intentionally) remake institutions, all of these aspects are likely to be relevant. First, intentional change will inevitably be contested and trigger political struggles (historical institutionalism). Second, it will involve coordination around presumed joint interests to address a problem (rational choice institutionalism). Third, it will be driven at least partially by existing or changing norms and concerns over legitimacy (sociological institutionalism). Fourth, it will also be driven by deliberation among agents seeking to step outside of existing institutions and persuade others of the need for change (discursive institutionalism).

But all these behaviors occur within inherited institutional structures that constrain the range of possible action and the types of change that can be accomplished from one moment to the next. Institutions almost never provide a blank slate for action but carry legacies of rules, expectations, arrangements, investments, and norms from prior moments. Even in cases where new institutions are created, this will probably not be in a vacuum but will be linked with existing institutions in some way, whether as a challenge to existing institutions or in some way connected to neighboring institutions. Hence, what matters for institutional remaking is understanding how agents are conditioned by institutional structures, at the same time as they act (for possibly multiple reasons) within these settings, and the overall consequences for (ongoing) institutional development over time.

In recent years, scholars have sought to theorize the mechanisms by which institutional change occurs. Past explanations of institutional change leaned particularly on exogenous factors under the punctuated equilibrium model, whereby periods of stasis are punctuated by moments of shock that trigger abrupt changes (Reference Baumgartner and JonesBaumgartner and Jones, 2009). This is also reflected in the notion of critical junctures in historical institutionalism, where path dependency is redirected at key moments (often due to an exogenous shock). Among climate change scholars, it is sometimes suggested that climate-related disasters may provide “focusing events” (Reference BirklandBirkland, 1998) capable of spurring political responses (e.g., Reference Kates, Travis and WilbanksKates et al., 2012; Reference PrallePralle, 2009). However, there may be no reason to expect that a crisis will automatically trigger reform due to a range of possible barriers to institutional change (Section 2.2).Footnote ¹⁵

Contemporary political science shows skepticism toward exogenous factors as a sole explanation for institutional change. For example, Reference LiebermanLieberman (2002, p. 697) argues that a “reliance on exogenous factors” limits a fuller understanding of institutional change. Instead, endogenous explanations of institutional change have been proposed, whereby institutions are seen to have the potential to change gradually as a result of ongoing political struggles over their meaning, interpretation, and enforcement, which introduces deviations that accumulate over time (Reference Mahoney and ThelenMahoney and Thelen, 2010; Reference Streeck and ThelenStreeck and Thelen, 2005). These scholars propose mechanisms of displacement (the introduction of new rules, which directly replace previous rules), layering (the introduction of new rules on top of or attached to existing rules), conversion (new interpretations or enactments of existing rules), and drift (the altered impact of rules within changing circumstances) (Reference Mahoney and ThelenMahoney and Thelen, 2010). The key insight here is to recognize that while the degrees of freedom available to agents are constrained in many ways, there are often also many ambiguities and openings present, which generate ongoing struggles and afford opportunities for flexibility (Reference Mahoney and ThelenMahoney and Thelen, 2010).

On the other hand, sustainability scholars often place significant emphasis on the relation between institutions and their exogenous context. For example, Reference YoungYoung (2010a, Reference Young2010b) argues that institutional change in international environmental regimes is driven, to a significant extent, by pressure from environmental changes, mediated by the extent to which an institution is capable of managing the imposed stresses. This is suggested to occur through mechanisms such as market adjustment, learning, reauthorization of political authority, and amendment procedures (Reference YoungYoung, 2010b). Broadly, this reflects a focus on the “fit” of institutions in their context. But such fit may not just involve material/environmental contexts, but also cognitive/discursive contexts, which are not necessarily aligned. This is especially relevant for climate change, where anticipatory action is grounded in knowledge and norms about unfolding and expected climatic shifts which have not yet (fully) manifested, at the same time that material climate impacts may also be occurring and stressing institutions in new ways.Footnote ¹⁶ In this light, Reference YoungYoung (2013) identifies a need to integrate instrumental and interpretive explanations of institutional action, which also alludes to the relation between institutions and their ideational context (Reference LiebermanLieberman, 2002; Reference Patterson and HuitemaPatterson and Huitema, 2019).

More generally, Reference PiersonPierson (2004) emphasizes the need to pay attention to both short and long timeframes in examining mechanisms of institutional change, particularly due to threshold behavior, whereby slow-moving factors (e.g., socioeconomic or demographic shifts) go unnoticed until eventually producing a rapid change when a certain threshold is exceeded. This resonates with Reference YoungYoung (2010a) in the environmental domain, considering the buildup of “stress” within institutions over time. As a result of slow-moving factors, “what may seem like a relatively rapid process of reform is in fact only the final stage of a process that has in fact been underway for an extended period” (Reference PiersonPierson, 2004, p. 141). This is relevant for climate change because slow-moving environmental shifts could cause institutional failures (Section 2.1). More subtly, various slow-moving socioeconomic and political factors could condition a society in ways that make institutional failure more or less likely under an abrupt climate impact. For example, growing social inequality, inadequate knowledge and preparedness, or erosion of political trust could raise the likelihood of catastrophic institutional failure under a major event such as a flood, drought, or storm.

Altogether, this suggests that understanding the (intentional) remaking of institutions requires considering both endogenous and exogenous factors and paying attention to unfolding processes of change over time. Attempts to remake institutions are likely to be inherently political and, therefore, unable to be accomplished without work and struggle. For example, while some agents may seek to change institutions, others may react against changes by seeking to block or manipulate them (Reference CapocciaCapoccia, 2016), or to maintain existing institutions (Reference Lawrence, Suddaby and LecaLawrence et al., 2009), or simply carry on with existing routines (Reference Patterson, Betsill, Gerlak and BenneyBeunen and Patterson, 2019). Thus, institutional remaking will involve active “work” on the part of agents attempting to realize institutional changes. Mechanisms of institutional change are not likely to be straightforward or singular, especially for prospective (e.g., anticipatory) interventions, and may involve both instrumental and interpretive aspects. Moreover, we should expect that attempts to remake institutions will trigger complex political dynamics that play out against the backdrop of existing institutional orders within a particular social and material/environmental context.

3.1 Defining Institutional Remaking

Institutional remaking is defined here as: the activities by which agents intentionally develop political institutions in anticipation of, or in response to, institutional weaknesses and failures. Hence, it is a political activity that seeks to influence certain type(s) of political institutions, motivated by experience or perceptions of institutional shortcomings. The term “remaking” encompasses both the “making” of new elements and the “remaking” of existing elements, while emphasizing that this (almost always) occurs within an existing (possibly already crowded) institutional setting. Thus, there is always a large degree of working with, and building on, what already exists, rather than the unproblematic introduction of new institutional designs.

Therefore, institutional remaking is distinguished from the notion of institutional design through an emphasis on unfolding processes, embeddedness, and political contestation. Yet it carries the same core interest in understanding how institutions may be intentionally improved. On the other hand, institutional remaking is a subset of the broader notion of institutional change, through its core focus on understanding activities that seek to intentionally bring about institutional change. The notion of institutional change encompasses a wider scope of interest in discovering and explaining processes of change occurring for all sorts of intentional and unintentional reasons. Hence, institutional remaking carves out a distinct focus combining the intentionality concern of institutional design scholars, with the process concern of institutional change (and especially institutional development) scholars. This is further discussed in Section 3.4.

Notably, the definition of institutional remaking proposed does not include a specific end or objective toward which institutional remaking is oriented. In the case of climate change and other pressing governance challenges (Section 1), institutional remaking is oriented toward improving the public good, where public good refers to ends which are, by some reasonable justification, aimed toward benefitting a broad public. This distinguishes institutional remaking from actions that are focused on advancing the private interests of a particular social actor only. Of course, there is no single public good in heterogeneous societies due to the presence of varying and even contradicting interests, preferences, and worldviews. Nonetheless, as an intentional activity, institutional remaking is always done by certain social agents toward certain ends, which should be made explicit when studying it. The public good end is best defined with reference empirically to values and goals articulated by social actors within a given context.

Notably, by not pegging institutional remaking to a particular end, this allows it to be generalized as an analytical approach, which could also be applied to developments deemed negative by some social actors. For example, various political reform agendas favored by one political persuasion but disfavored by another could still readily be studied through a lens of institutional remaking. However, this is beyond the scope here.

3.2 A Processual Lens

The study of institutional remaking requires a processual lens focusing on the interactions by which institutional changes develop (or not). Of course, institutional scholarship contains rich processual insights and leanings, especially in lines of thinking on institutional development (Reference PiersonPierson, 2004, Reference Pierson2000a, Reference Pierson2000b, Reference Pierson1993) and comparative historical analysis (Reference Mahoney and ThelenMahoney and Thelen, 2015).Footnote ¹⁷ Elsewhere, much institutional scholarship focuses on static snapshots where initial and final states (e.g., State A, State B) take the foreground, and processes of change are secondary. However, studying institutional remaking requires embracing process as ontology, partly because of the inherently interactional and historically encumbered basis on which institutional changes develop, and partly because when we look forward in time we simply cannot know (or easily assume) what an end state (State B) may be, and therefore explaining change from State A to State B is difficult. We need to find ways to leverage existing insights about processes of institutional change (e.g., drawing on insights from rational, historical, sociological, and discursive lines of thinking; see Section 2.3), in an open-ended way looking forward in time.

Political institutions both cause and constitute struggles over climate change and societal transformation. Institutions are partially autonomous features of political life, which have casual influence on social and political activity but, at the same time, are themselves shaped by social and political activity (Reference March and OlsenMarch and Olsen, 1983). Moreover, institutions involve inherent dynamism (Reference Patterson, Betsill, Gerlak and BenneyBeunen and Patterson, 2019; Reference Lawrence, Suddaby and LecaLawrence et al., 2009; Reference Mahoney and ThelenMahoney and Thelen, 2010), and their production and reproduction is “a dynamic political process” (Reference Streeck and ThelenStreeck and Thelen, 2005, p. 6) emerging from interactions among endogenous actors, and responses to exogenous circumstances.

Institutional remaking, in the fullest sense, is likely to often be an ongoing process, one that is “in-the-making” over extended timeframes and hence needs to be analyzed in ways that recognize this unfolding character. A key departure point is to move from a focus on institutional choice to a focus on institutional development: “To shift our focus from explaining moments of institutional choice to understanding processes of institutional development” (Reference PiersonPierson, 2004, p. 133, emphasis added). This is also important when treating institutional change as a dependent variable, where “established institutions modify the prospects for further institutional change” (Reference PiersonPierson, 2004, pp. 131–132).

However, sustainability scholars often treat institutions in a static way, as either inputs or outputs. As inputs, institutions are frequently invoked to explain performance failures in governance (e.g., success or failure of certain actions) or to explain difficulties in advancing climate change responses more generally (e.g., Reference Biagini, Bierbaum, Stults, Dobardzic and McNeeleyBiagini et al., 2014; Reference Carter, Cavan, Connelly, Guy, Handley and KazmierczakCarter et al., 2015; Reference Eakin and LemosEakin and Lemos, 2010; Reference Gupta, Termeer, Klostermann, Meijerink, van den Brink, Jong, Nooteboom and BergsmaGupta et al., 2010). This approach treats institutions as an independent variable to explain other social, political, and environmental outcomes. As outputs, institutions are examined either in their actuality such as the institutionalization of new norms or practices (e.g., Reference Anguelovski and CarminAnguelovski and Carmin, 2011; Reference AylettAylett, 2015; Reference Carmin, Anguelovski and RobertsCarmin et al., 2012) or in their ideal such as normative prescriptions concerning what “should” be implemented or changed in order to advance climate action. This is an approach that treats institutions as a dependent variable resulting from other causal forces. However, what is still missing is explicit theorization of the processes of change themselves. In other words, institutional change itself needs to be a dependent variable (following Reference Mahoney and ThelenMahoney and Thelen, 2010). This is crucial to understanding how existing institutions are, or could be, remade.

3.3 The Role of Intentionality

Until now, institutional remaking has been defined as an intentional activity. However, this warrants careful elaboration to situate the analytical role of intentionality. Potential pitfalls must be addressed regarding (i) the degree to which intentionality is possible given institutional complexity and (ii) whether or not functionalist arguments are invoked by the notion of institutional remaking.

First, intentionality captures the idea of actors attempting to address perceived institutional weaknesses or failures. On the one hand, it is clear that intentional institutional intervention is urgently required for problems such as climate change. Yet on the other hand, institutional intervention is notoriously challenging and plagued by unintended consequences (Reference GoodinGoodin, 1998; Reference PiersonPierson, 2004, Reference Pierson2000b; Reference Young, King and SchroederYoung et al., 2008). Institutions are typically encumbered by their past. For example, as Pierson (Reference PiersonPierson, 2000b, p. 493) observes: “Actors do not inherit a blank slate that they can remake at will when their preferences shift or unintended consequences become visible. Instead, actors find that the dead weight of previous institutional choices seriously limits their room to maneuver.” Furthermore, societal heterogeneity means that consensus toward any particular course of action is unlikely. Thus, institutional remaking, concerned as it is with prospective changes, recognizes the need for intentionality but also its problems. How can this be reconciled?

The answer here is to relax the expectation that intentional intervention actually leads to the foreseen ends. The outcomes of institutional remaking will always depend on many factors within and outside the scope of control of any particular actor or coalition. However, the substantive problems at hand, and the desired directionality of improvement, nevertheless orient actions taken by actors. Moreover, it should not be expected that the goals of actors/coalitions remain fixed. Negotiation and compromise, pragmatic judgments under bounded rationality, and difficulties realizing collective goals in practice may all modify the goals of actors attempting to remake institutions as these activities unfold over time.

Second, a more subtle, but potentially theoretically fraught (Reference PiersonPierson, 2000b) question arises about whether institutional remaking invokes functionalist arguments. Functionalism refers to a form of argumentation that “explains the origins of an institution largely in terms of the effects that follow from its existence. [however] … [b]ecause unintended consequences are ubiquitous in the social world, one cannot safely deduce origins from consequence” (Reference Hall and TaylorHall and Taylor, 1996, p. 952). Functionalism would assume that pressures on institutions are acknowledged and addressed to enable a system to return to serving a predefined purpose. However, as has been previously noted, mechanisms such as learning, competition, and adaptation (which would be expected to kick in automatically under functionalism) are often likely to be weak (Section 2.2).

Reference PiersonPierson (2004) critiques both an “actor-centered functionalism” (which assumes that actors choose an institutional design in order to meet certain objectives) and a “societal functionalism” (which assumes institutional evolution through competitive selection driven by environmental pressures). While not denying their potential ubiquity, he argues that “they suggest a world of political institutions that is far more prone to efficiency and continuous refinement, far less encumbered by the preoccupations and mistakes of the past, than the world we actually inhabit” (Reference PiersonPierson, 2004, p. 131). Yet concerns about institutional weaknesses and failures may nonetheless motivate certain actors to attempt interventions, even while they are unable to escape the difficult realties of institutional politics (Section 2.2). The key point is that these motivations may not be singular or analytically sufficient for explanation. Doing away entirely with such reasoning obscures the potential to study intentional institutional changes at all (which indeed, some scholars may argue for). Yet this is exactly the challenge with which contemporary sustainability and political science scholarship must do better to engage with (Section 1.6). Moreover, there is no reason to assume that outcomes match objectives; the degree of “success” (however defined) can be assessed empirically.

Working with sustainability problems, such as climate change, raises murky questions about normative goals (and therefore assumed system purposes) and the relationship of institutions to their environmental contexts. For example, addressing climate change is, by definition, concerned with impacts and shifts in natural systems and their effects on human systems. This might make traditional institutional theorists wary of overreliance on functionalist argumentation. Sustainability scholars have approached this challenge through employing concepts such as the “fit” between human and natural systems (Reference Young, King and SchroederYoung et al., 2008). For example, Reference YoungYoung (2013, p. 91) contends that “the success of environmental and resource regimes is a function of the fit or match between the principal elements of these institutional arrangements and the major features of the biophysical and socioeconomic settings in which they operate.” This helps to avoid functionalist oversimplifications by locating the degree of alignment between an institution and its context as an empirical question. It also connotes a problem-grounded focus, where a given sustainability governance problem must be recognized as embedded in both material/environmental and normative (e.g., public good) contexts.

This can be further sharpened by considering the type of question being asked. When asking an ex post explanatory question, what matters is what did happen and how and why (hence excessive functionalism is a risk to constructing a valid or convincing explanation). However, when asking an exploratory question grounded in the present and with a view toward the future (which is a key focus when studying institutional remaking), then what matters is what is happening, and what could happen, and how and why (without presuming what outcomes might actually be produced). Arguably, if scholars are to put theory to work in helping to address pressing institutional problems, rather than wait for changes to play out in the world before venturing an explanation, then there is no choice but to engage with this murky middle ground.Footnote ¹⁸

3.4 Design versus Remaking

Intentional intervention is often treated as institutional design and assumed to be rationally carried out toward instrumental ends. But there is no reason conceptually why institutional intervention cannot also be seen as an interpretive activity, conducted by actors toward their own (instrumental and interpretive) ends, within a particular context. This view of institutional intervention – as a contingent political activity with provisional and unfolding effects – remains undertheorized. This is the focus of institutional remaking.

Institutional remaking is centrally concerned with understanding the nature and effects of action on institutional structures, in other words, the structural politics of institutional intervention. It treats institutional intervention as an activity conducted over time and embedded within a certain context, rather than as a once-off moment. It also moves beyond seeing institutional intervention as an independent variable, either for explaining institutional performance or for prescribing the institutions needed to address certain problems effectively (e.g., Reference MitchellMitchell, 2006; Reference Young, King and SchroederYoung et al., 2008). Instead, institutional intervention itself becomes the dependent variable. Sustainability scholars may be highly attuned to the challenges of institutional design: the fact that it can be imperfect, have unintended consequences, and by no means shows a direct relation with performance due to many other mediating factors (Reference Young, King and SchroederYoung et al., 2008). For example, Young (Reference YoungYoung, 2013, p. 102) reflects that “the establishment of any environmental governance system is an intensely political process in which interested parties struggle to promote their own preferences, often at the expense of the selection of options that would produce results that are more desirable in societal terms.” However, there is still a so-far unaddressed need to break open the political dynamics of institutional intervention, recognized within a historical context but also with an explicit eye toward the future.

To do so, institutional remaking recognizes both activities and outcomes in a “comprehensive” approach (Section 4). Attempts to remake institutions may not have clear starting and stopping moments, and long-term problems are unlikely to be solved in a single moment but may instead involve ongoing jockeying and struggles. Indeed, Reference GoodinGoodin (1998, p. 30) argues that analysts concerned with institutional design must begin with a notion of “design and redesign, shaping and reshaping” (emphasis in original) because of the inevitable “backdrop of past practices” imposing “constraints and possibilities.” Institutional remaking, therefore, directs attention to understanding activities playing out within what could be regarded as an “eternally unfolding present.”Footnote ¹⁹

The term “remaking” itself has several helpful connotations. It implies a focus on ongoing activities (including work and struggle) rather than a single intervention moment, it directs attention to the present rather than only explaining the past (ex post) or seeking to predict the future (ex ante), it foregrounds the idea of beginning with existing institutional settings (which may be complex, crowded, and fragmented) rather than assuming a blank slate,Footnote ²⁰ it suggests that both empirical analysis and normative judgments come into play, and most broadly, it reflects the long-standing notion that “effects becomes causes”Footnote ²¹ when analyzing institutions over time. It also permits consideration of ongoing/unfolding activities and partial/provisional outcomes. Overall, being grounded in a social production perspective (Section 1.5) leads to questions about how, why, and under which conditions institutional intervention arises and with what effects.

Nonetheless, some scholars are likely to be wary of studying institutional intervention, even when the focus is on endogenous agents taking this action, due to the role of intentionality. However, Reference GoodinGoodin (1998, pp. 27–28) argues that intentional intervention does not necessarily mean linking any particular action to the realization of any specific outcome because unintended outcomes are ubiquitous, mistakes occur and no single agent determines outcomes. Furthermore, arguably, there are useful antecedents in institutional theory, which at least provide conceptual points of dialogue. For example, much institutional scholarship across the various institutionalisms (Section 2.3) now takes an agency turn, including in historical institutionalism where agency is posited as a key explanatory variable for institutional change (e.g., Reference CapocciaCapoccia, 2016; Reference Mahoney and ThelenMahoney and Thelen, 2010; Reference SheingateSheingate, 2014), in sociological institutionalism where “institutional work” seeks to explain diverse activities of agents within institutional settings (Reference Lawrence, Suddaby and LecaLawrence et al., 2009), and in discursive institutionalism where agents step outside their institutionally defined roles to communicatively challenge dominant institutions (Reference SchmidtSchmidt, 2008). This interest in agency is certainly joined by sustainability scholars (e.g., Reference Betsill, Benney and GerlakBetsill et al., 2020; Reference Beunen, Patterson and Van AsscheBeunen et al., 2017; Reference Patterson, Betsill, Gerlak and BenneyBeunen and Patterson, 2019). While of course attention to agency does not equate with a focus on intentionality, it does suggest potential to explore institutional intervention as it is perceived by endogenous agents, which opens up the notion of institutional remaking.

4.1 Comprehensive Frame

Having defined institutional remaking in the previous section, the question now arises: How can we know or evaluate when “successful” institutional remaking has occurred? This is not a purely instrumental matter. Problems at hand (such as climate change) are inherently political in their causes and solutions, which therefore require assessing changes against instrumental and normative criteria (e.g., some notion of the public good). Hence, observing institutional remaking entails both instrumental and normative judgments,Footnote ²² within a given context.

To speak of institutional “success” only makes sense in reference to some sort of (explicit or assumed) purpose or functioning expected of an institution. For formal political institutionsFootnote ²³ considered in the context of climate change, it is not an unreasonable expectation that such a yardstick should often exist, even if a particular institution in question serves multiple purposes (e.g., legislatures making laws, upholding of property rights) or even is seen to serve different ends by different actors (e.g., legal or policy obligations that require interpretation in their enforcement). After all, whether political institutions are purposefully created at a certain moment in time (e.g., laws, regulations, policies, political setups, coordination mechanisms), or arise in some other way (e.g., norms, practices), we typically expect them to serve some sort of end in a democratic polity. Thus, in the context of evaluation, it is not unreasonable to make judgments about institutional success, either with reference to an institution’s own implicit or stated purpose (e.g., to achieve a democratically determined societal objective) or an external expectation (e.g., protect human well-being and safety under climate change, ensure peaceful resolution of conflict over resources in changing circumstances, reduce carbon emissions). The challenge, though, is threefold (i) to avoid deferring to functionalist interpretations (e.g., institution X exists precisely because it serves a certain purpose), (ii) to avoid simplistic judgments about success without accounting for clusters of institutions (since no single institution is likely to be sufficient for addressing climate change in any of the ways identified in Section 1.1), and (iii) to avoid viewing success as a unanimously held view among social actorsFootnote ²⁴ (which would be unlikely under conditions of social heterogeneity).

Furthermore, institutional remaking is a processual phenomenon (Section 3.2), entailing both ongoing/unfolding activities and partial/provisional outcomes. Capturing such processes that are “in-the-making” is complex and may involve multiple criteria. For example, Reference GoodinGoodin (1998, pp. 40–43) suggests several “middle-range” criteria for judging the success of institutional design: revisability balanced against productive stability, robustness and adaptability within changing environments, awareness of multiple motivations of agents, public reasoning and defensibility, and variability in the face of complexity. But we also need a way of comprehensively capturing both “movement” and tentative outcomes that may not have fully manifested. In essence, this reflects the challenge of capturing an emergent trajectory as is it emerging.Footnote ²⁵ A comprehensive way of evaluating institutional remaking is therefore needed.

A novel starting point for a comprehensive approach to observing, and ultimately evaluating, institutional remaking is to draw on a line of thinking proposed by Amartya Sen in political philosophy about understanding progress toward enhancing justice in society (Reference SenSen, 2009). The underlying logic can be adapted to the challenge of institutional remaking for other contested and open-ended societal problems. Sen is concerned with practical social choice in settings involving incommensurable plurality of values. He argues that practical actions to bring about social improvement do not necessarily need to achieve, or even be oriented by, an “ideal” in order to be meaningful. Indeed, approaching the problem this way is likely to lead to gridlock given different preferences and values, he argues. Similarly, the ultimate end point of efforts to remake institutions for climate change (or other issues) is likely to be unclear at the outset, rendering ultimate consensus unlikely. Furthermore, institutional settings are complex, and contexts change over time, meaning that it is unlikely that ideal institutions could ever be fully specified.Footnote ²⁶

Therefore, Reference SenSen (2009) advocates a need for “non-ideal” reasoning, in contrast to a “transcendental” reasoning that focuses on ideal arrangements. Nonideal reasoning starts with the empirical circumstances of the real world as it appears and tries to work out how to make improvements, rather than deriving prescriptions about ultimate goals from theory. Sen argues that this leads to a comparative approach, which may not be able to specify how a problem will be ultimately resolved but can nevertheless take feasible steps toward improving a situation from one moment to the next. This is profound because it liberates us from the expectation of knowing what ideal political institutions would look like before getting started. It also allows us to move away from “universal institutional designs and general ‘solutions’” to instead “focus on the processes ‘attuned to the suboptimal arrangements of an imperfect reality’, a reality defined by abundant heterogeneity, diversity, and endemic disagreement” (Reference AligicaAligica, 2014, p. 25; quoting Rescher 1993). As a result, there is no need to assume that a single form or direction of institutional remaking is optimal.

Central to Reference SenSen’s (2009) thinking is also the idea of “comprehensive” outcomes. This places a focus on jointly evaluating both the effects that result from social action and the processes by which they came about. Hence, it encompasses both consequentialist and deontic aspects; in other words, “what actually happens” as well as “how things are done” are part of the comprehensive outcome. This is important given the inherently political nature of institutional remaking and its scope encompassing both activities and outcomes. Attending to comprehensive outcomes helps to pay attention to both outcomes and the normative quality of activities undertaken.Footnote ²⁷

Together, the notions of nonideal reasoning and comprehensive outcomes provide a frame for observing institutional remaking. First, this focuses on feasible improvements rather than only on fully ideal solutions, which allows for identifying forms of institutional remaking that are, or could be, taken within actual institutional setups in a given moment. Second, it turns attention to comparative improvements both within and across cases (cross-sectionally and longitudinally). Third, it focuses attention on trajectories of institutional development as a basis for evaluating institutional remaking, for example, whether certain changes cumulate and have transformative effects. Fourth, it hints toward a need to recognize the capacity to produce institutional remaking on an ongoing basis.

4.2 Evaluation Categories

Building on the previous section, three core evaluation categories for institutional remaking are: comparative improvement, directionality of institutional change, and the capacity for social action (Table 3). Comparative improvement focuses on finding feasible improvements compared to a prior or reference setting. Directionality of institutional change focuses on judgments about trajectories of institutional development. The capacity for social action focuses on the ongoing capacity to remake institutions over time.

“Comparative improvement” refers to substantive and feasible improvements within a given case. This involves assessing (possibly partial) outcomes of institutional remaking, such as institutional changes realized, or in progress. Indicators of comparative improvement may be endogenous to the case itself (i.e., longitudinal comparison across moments in time) or involve comparison with other relevant reference cases (i.e., cross-sectional or longitudinal comparison). In assessing comparative improvement there must be close attention to the specific details of a case, including the forms of institutional remaking that are (or could be) taken within the particular setting, context, and moment. Possible measures for comparative improvement may include material changes produced (e.g., emissions reductions),Footnote ²⁸ preparedness for future expected conditions (e.g., climate adaptation), social outcomes (e.g., equity), legitimacy of activities, and the overall relationship between institutions and their context (“fit”). Empirically this might be observable as changes in institutions across various levels (e.g., programmatic, legislative, constitutional) or changes in various types of rules within a particular decision-making arena (e.g., relating to aspects such as boundaries, positions, choices, information, aggregation, payoffs, and scope).Footnote ²⁹

“Directionality of institutional change” refers to the trajectory of institutional development over time, as it is influenced by attempts to remake institutions within a given case. This involves judging the outcomes of institutional remaking against the extent to which the resulting institutional trajectory becomes better suited to addressing a particular problem (such as climate change), viewed within their historical context. This requires empirical and normative judgments. For example, a seemingly small change in a gridlocked setting might nevertheless be significant, and multiple small changes over time might cumulate into something more transformative, but this requires empirical judgment to determine. At the same time, the desirability of these changes must be judged against some sort of normative criteria (e.g., effectiveness, equity, efficiency). These judgments are challenging because shifts in institutional trajectories may be subtle or provisional and must be carefully interpreted.

Indicators of the directionality of institutional change may include (i) immediate shifts in institutional trajectories caused by institutional remaking and (ii) longer-term shifts in institutional trajectories triggered by a particular instance of institutional remaking (e.g., through cumulative and/or catalytic effects). Firstly, measures of immediate shifts (i) may include: radical institutional changes (relative to past institutional development) and institutional changes that significantly shift power and authority. Empirically, this might be observed as new ambitious goals, substantially altered behavior of public and private actors, and legal changes that change patterns of participation in political decision-making. For example, this could include legislation that mandates large-scale emissions reductions (e.g., ambitious targets for emissions reduction or renewable energy uptake), decommissioning of fossil fuel industries and frameworks supporting them (e.g., subsidies), incentivizing or sanctioning behaviors to stimulate low-carbon shifts, and legal changes to reflect climate risks (e.g., property rights, constitutions, standing). Secondly, measures of longer-term shifts (ii) may include cumulative effects and catalytic effects. Cumulative effects refer to temporal sequences whereby action in different institutional arenas or at different moments in time “join up” to produces substantial shifts in rules and/or patterns of political activity. For example, scholars sometimes suggest that incremental institutional changes can cumulate into transformative changes over time (Reference Patterson, Schulz, Vervoort, van der Hel, Widerberg, Adler, Hurlbert, Anderton, Sethi and BarauPatterson et al., 2017; Reference Streeck and ThelenStreeck and Thelen, 2005). Empirically, this might be observed as a pattern of increasingly substantive actions that link and build up over time. For example, this could occur when certain impactful actions are observed to have only become possible because of earlier modest or tentative actions. This requires looking over an extended time period and at a system level in order to trace interdependencies between actions. Catalytic effects occur when action taken by “first movers” triggers action among actors who are otherwise reluctant, due to altered preferences (Reference HaleHale, 2018). Indicators of catalytic effects include actions which trigger an increasing rate of change in rules and/or patterns of political activity. Empirically, this might be observed as changes in preference distributions (and subsequent actions) as a result of action taken by another actor or actions that involve “doing something differently to enable another entity to better perform a governance task” (Reference Betsill, Dubash, Paterson, van Asselt, Vihma and WinklerBetsill et al., 2015).

“Capacity for social action” refers to the ongoing ability for actors to remake institutions over time. This involves assessing the factors underlying the production of institutional remaking. It is particularly important for evaluating institutional remaking as an unfolding activity without clear start and end points, which may play out over extended periods of time. Moreover, institutional contexts are always changing, particularly under climate change. Indicators of the production of social action are capability and durability. Measures of capability may include agency (of both individuals and coalitions) and opportunity structures. Empirically, this might be observed as the active creation and/or phase-out of certain systems. For example, this could include planning to decarbonize and adapt various sectors of society (such as energy, food, built environment, mobility, industry). Measures of durability may include changes in rules which “stick” over time and have meaningful consequences for political activity. Empirically, this might be observed as rules becoming accepted as legitimately “settled” matters even by opponents and changes in rules being further built upon both within a particular issue area (e.g., planning regulations about energy reduction in buildings being relied upon in national emissions reductions policies) and in other interlinked areas (e.g., introduction of low-emissions zones in cities spurring changes in future urban planning).

Altogether, these indicators and measures are by no means exhaustive and simply provide a starting point for evaluating institutional remaking. Nonetheless, the three core categories of Table 3 are arguably necessary to such an evaluation; in other words, they must all be present to meaningfully observe institutional remaking.

5.1 Overview

This section interrogates meso-levelFootnote ³¹ political dynamics, which we would expect to play out during attempts to remake institutions, synthesized as areas of institutional production, namely novelty, uptake, dismantling, stability, and interplay. Together, this provides a heuristic typology (Table 4) and a set of entry points for empirical study, including the development and testing of hypotheses about institutional remaking. These five areas of institutional production coexist. Disaggregating them, therefore, is useful because institutional remaking may occur in several ways simultaneously. This opens up new opportunities to interrogate, theorize, and test the complex and interconnected political dynamics, which occur during attempts to remake institutions.

Importantly, the five areas of institutional production are all “positive” productions in the sense that they each contribute to actively shaping institutional development over time. This reflects a view of institutions as social phenomena that are continually produced and reproduced. For novelty and uptake this productive quality is intuitively clear. More subtly, stability is produced in the sense that underneath even seemingly stable and persistent institutions is often a foundation of continual dynamism (Section 2.3). However, even dismantling (which may at first glance sound de-productive) is actually a productive activity because it involves active work to bring about, and even if arising entirely due to neglect, such neglect is also ultimately a choice in some sense and therefore a productive action. Similarly, interplay is not an automatic property but rather one that is actively brought into being (e.g., cultivated, undermined, or both). This focus on “areas of production” reflects a processual ontology as articulated earlier (Section 3.2), as each of the five areas is something continuously unfolding and in-the-making.

5.2 Five Areas of Institutional Production

5.3 Synthesis

The five areas of institutional production identified – novelty, uptake, dismantling, stability, and interplay – together provide a comprehensive lens for analyzing institutional remaking. Each of these areas of production is likely to play out individually, but they may also interact, such as occurring simultaneously or in sequence. For example, uptake and dismantling may occur sequentially: Dismantling may need to occur first to make space for uptake of new institutions, or uptake may need to occur first to stimulate dismantling. Both uptake and dismantling are in tension with stability.Footnote ³⁹ Novelty and uptake may occur sequentially as novel institutional elements stimulate uptake. Stability and interplay may be interdependent: Linkages with institutions in another domain may stabilize the rules of a particular decision-making arena, or on the other hand, changes in institutions in another domain may undermine stability of a particular decision-making arena. Hence, in their fullest sense, the five areas of institutional production need to be considered jointly as well as individually.

Yet each individual area of institutional production is itself complex and potentially multi-causal. A key benefit of the typology is that it opens up new opportunities to develop precise causal mechanisms involved in institutional remaking, within a broader perspective. In Sections 5.2.1–5.2.5, the five areas of institutional production have been decomposed, showing various ways in which they are approached in current literature. While this does not in itself provide testable causal mechanisms, it directs attention to key causal features that can be used to develop such explanations. Table 5 summarizes the five areas of institutional production, also identifying the causal features indicated by each, which provides a basis for hypothesis generation and testing. Notably, hypotheses can be limited to interrogating causality within any individual area, or they can consider various permutations (e.g., to explore interactive effects such as simultaneous presence, sequential dependence, or conditioning effects).Footnote ⁴⁰ For example, governance scholars at both international (Reference Hale and HeldHale and Held, 2018) and domestic (Reference Patterson, Voogt and SapiainsPatterson et al., 2019) levels have identified the importance of constellations of causal mechanisms involved in bringing about substantive institutional changes in governance. Hence, ultimately the typology developed here opens up new opportunities for systematic, theory-driven comparative analysis to advance understanding of causal mechanisms involved in institutional remaking.

Pushing the focus on causality further reveals four conceptual clusters of explanatory variables (Figure 3). First, political work encompasses the activities of agents working for or against institutional changes, emphasizing the relevance of a wide variety of forms of agency in institutional remaking. Second, contextual factors encompass the active role of context in institutional remaking, not just as a backdrop but as generating causal force. Third, slow-moving forces encompass factors that may seem minor at any given moment, but which become causally significant over long timeframes. Fourth, structural reconfiguration encompasses the causal role of changes in system structure which progressively change the conditions for future activity over time. These clusters are not only interesting to observe in themselves, but, importantly, they also provide further ideas for generating hypotheses about causal processes and bridging between bodies of scholarship that focus on different but related phenomena.

Figure 3

Relating the five areas of institutional production to broader causal clusters

Hence, the overall approach here helps to synthesize fragmented lines of thinking about how intentional institutional change can be conceptualized, explained, and accomplished. Moreover, it brings problem-driven thinking from sustainability governance into dialogue with disciplinary traditions of thinking about institutional and political change, to develop a robust foundation on which the study of institutional remaking can be fruitfully advanced. This is significant because (interdisciplinary) sustainability governance scholarship often remains disconnected from (disciplinary) political science scholarship, which hinders a richer understanding of how multiplying institutional challenges faced in many domains, scales, and places can be tackled both in theory and practice. Indeed, the opportunity for productive dialogue among scholars enabled by the approach developed in this Element is one of its key overall contributions.

6.1 Insights about Processes of Institutional Change

6.2 Contributions to Broader Institutional Theory

7.1 Research Agenda

Sustainability scholars concerned with understanding governance in the domestic political sphere increasingly find useful insights in institutional theory. For example, recent work considers climate policy (Reference Jordan and MattJordan and Matt, 2014), low-carbon transitions (e.g., Reference Andrews-SpeedAndrews-Speed, 2016; Reference Lockwood, Kuzemko, Mitchell and HoggettLockwood et al., 2017; Reference Roberts, Geels, Lockwood, Newell, Schmitz, Turnheim and JordanRoberts et al., 2018; Reference Roberts and GeelsRoberts and Geels, 2019), and climate change adaptation (e.g., Reference Patterson, Voogt and SapiainsPatterson et al., 2019; Reference Patterson and HuitemaPatterson and Huitema, 2019) through a developmental institutional lens. This work collectively illuminates understudied institutional dimensions of sustainability transformations, since institutions are not often studied directly in this scholarship. Yet the current state of thinking about the role of institutions in sustainability transformations remains underdeveloped and does not provide a clear foundation for conceptualizing exactly how political institutions (often viewed as sluggish or even recalcitrant) may change. Such a foundation is exactly what this Element provides, with the ultimate hope that we can move toward better understanding of how institutions may be developed in directions that help to address major societal problems.

On the basis of the enquiry undertaken here, a variety of important new directions for future work arise, from both analytical and strategic angles (Table 6). Analytical questions provide the opportunity to strengthen our explanations of institutional change and development on pressing contemporary issues. Strategic questions provide the opportunity to find new approaches for intervention toward transformations in governance. Altogether, these questions provide a novel way of thinking about pressing new challenges arising in contemporary governance, as well as several long-standing theoretical and practical issues. They thus provide a roadmap for path-breaking research likely to yield new ways of understanding institutional matters of interest to analysts and practitioners alike.

Advancing an agenda on institutional remaking requires – and readily invites – comparative work across diverse settings. Institutional settings are almost infinitely complex and diverse (Reference OstromOstrom 2005), which means that the typology developed here is only a first step toward getting a better handle on how institutional improvement may be realized in many different areas of political life. For example, comparative work (only considering the domestic political sphere) could be delineated on the basis of places (both within and across countries), political systems (e.g., presidential or parliamentary, federal or unitary), levels of order (e.g., city, state/province, national), and issue areas (e.g., climate change, sustainability, welfare, economy, migration), among others.

While this Element is motivated by a concern for addressing institutional weaknesses and failures on public good issues (such as climate change, sustainability, and social equity), the approach developed here also potentially has a more generalizable quality. Conceivably, attempts to remake institutions toward a range of political agendas witnessed in contemporary politics (e.g., globalization, neoliberalization) could also be studied through the same basic approach. Yet this would certainly require modification of what is meant by “social improvement” to carefully specify whose agenda was the anchor for analysis. This would enable an even wider universe of potential cases through which to study and scrutinize the remaking of institutions within domestic politics.

7.2 Final Remarks

In a changing world, institutional success may be marked more by the ability of institutions and governance systems to adapt to and anticipate change, rather than by success in regulating or optimizing access to resources per se (following Reference DryzekDryzek, 2016). But the challenge, then, is how to get there, beginning from the imperfect starting point of the present – in other words, how to remake institutions in situ. Paradoxically, when we talk about societal transformations for climate change, we should not lose sight of the fact that in some ways it is an unprecedented challenge in human history, while at the same time, also an extension of ongoing and often mundane institutional politics.

The focus on climate change governance, including efforts to realize societal transformations, highlights the central role of institutional politics, which is still surprisingly understudied in sustainability governance scholarship. The focus on the domestic political sphere is also significant, given the “need for more nuanced, and regionally and nationally specific theories of change … [which] requires the building of national strategies and locating transformations within understandings of national political dynamics” (Reference Scoones, Leach and NewellScoones et al., 2015, p. 21). Yet the implications of the argument also extend far beyond climate change. For example, Reference AligicaAligica (2014, p. 204) observes that “self-governing, democratic systems are always fragile enterprises. Future citizens need to understand that they participate in the constitution and reconstitution of rule-governed polities.” Yet it is not just future citizens who are confronted with the need to reconstitute rule-governed polities, but also, unavoidably, those in the present. Creating the tools, frameworks, and insights to help do so is an immensely important task, which scholars are compelled to help tackle. It is not an understatement to say that political performance and societal well-being now depend, more than ever, on our ability to remake political institutions.