摘要
In order to gain a more comprehensive understanding of institutional change, researchers need to go beyond a snapshot view of significant events but consider events in their temporal setting. Pierson （2004） advocated that the events that lead to institutional change should be placed in a moving temporal context, as this will not only add to our comprehension of the dynamics of change, but also enrich the existing research and enhance the theories we employ to give meaning to these events. Pierson （2004） laid the foundation for the research that was later developed by Thelen （2009） that considered incremental endogenous shifts in institutional thinking that can often result in fundamental transformations. The central issues of Pierson＇s （2004） thesis lay in his interpretation of history and its relationship with path dependence. He claimed that once an institution has chosen a particular path to follow, it can become locked into that pathway and so the options of choice are restricted. This then presumed that an institutions first choice of action is crucial to whether they become locked into a successful course of action or not. The result of the first choice being successful or not would be dependent on the presence of increasing returns. The explication Pierson proffers of increasing returns is different to an economic one in that it is based on positive feedback processes and politics in time. The implications of Pierson＇s work and those that followed have a very serious place in our understanding of institutional change.
