Institutional and policy change: meta-theory and method

Abstract

This volume emerged from a general call for papers for a panel on institutional entrepreneurship and institutional change at the International Conference on Public Policy (ICPP) held in Milan, Italy, in the summer of 2015. We were overwhelmed by submissions to the panel and a level of interest in the topic which far exceeded our expectations. In retrospect, we should not have been surprised. Issues of institutional change continue to be of central concern to political scientists, economists, sociologists, and policy scholars alike—indeed, why and how institutions emerge, change, or are transcended over time is a core theoretical question at the centre of most social science inquiry.