This paper is a first effort to broach a discussion of institutions and institutional change in the
United States and the developing world. Facing the challenges of research on the politics of
economic development in the US and local adaptations to centrally imposed development
projects in Senegal, we noticed we were thinking about institutions and human agency in similar
ways. In spite of the obvious differences in our subjects of study, we independently came to the
idea that the very different institutions we puzzled over were complex bundles of elements that
could be combined and recombined in unpredictable ways. We both called this process
“syncretism.” We also noticed that our subjects often manipulated institutional pieces in ways
unexpected by conventional theories of human agency. Drawing upon structuralist
anthropology, Galvan came to call this capacity “bricolage”—the ability of people to assemble
available materials to solve pressing problems. Drawing upon pragmatist social theory, Berk
called this capacity the “creativity of action,” that is, the collective ability of people to reimagine
parts of their world anew and experiment with means to alter it.
We clearly work in very different empirical settings, engage different analytic problems, and
draw on distinct, but related literatures. In spite, or more so, because of these differences, we see
this paper as a compelling first step in exploring a shared way of thinking about institutions and
change, a set of insights we consider of sufficient analytic power and generality to bridge our
geographical divide and link communities of scholars often unaware of each others’ existence
In conducting research on the politics of industrialization in the United States, Berk came to
question the prevailing “transitions” narrative. America, he learned, did not pass neatly from a
competitive-proprietary to an administrative-corporate order. Instead, small enterprise, industrial
districts, business partnerships, specialty manufacturing, mutuals, cooperatives, and associations
continued to rival the large scale corporate hierarchies throughout the era of managerial
enterprise. Moreover, the relationship between business and the state remained complex,
contested, and diverse. Thus, the temptation to periodize American economic history neatly into
epochs of stability and change seemed to collapse. Traditional classes—such as small business
or farmers—that appeared reactionary in some ways looked vanguard in others. And the
managers and cosmopolitan intellectuals who designed America’s vanguard institutions—the
Convention