Culpepper, p. 2
cooperation. In such cases, the construction of new institutions is likely to follow the
emergence of new conspicuous points of coordination: focal points (Schelling 1960).
Unlike in those cases of change to lower coordination, we expect the emergence of new
focal points to be governed not strictly by the material interests of different actors, but by
their constructed obviousness as places around which to coordinate: “the outcome … may
not be so much conspicuously fair or conspicuously in balance with estimated bargaining
power as just plain ‘conspicuous’” (Schelling 1960: 69.)
In the next section I consider the process of institutional change and the
conditions under which we might expect focal point construction to acquire an important
causal role in that process. The empirical sections of the paper compare changes in
industrial relations institutions since 1985, contrasting the emergence of greater
coordination in Italy and Ireland with moves to less coordinated institutions in Sweden
and Australia. The final section concludes.
The Process of Institutional Change
Much of the literature on institutional change posits that the catalyst of institutional
breakdown is an exogenous shock that destabilizes an existing institution. An institution
can be destabilized by the a change in the relative power balance between those who
support an existing institution and those who oppose it. Alternatively (or in conjunction),
an exogenous shock may diminish the effectiveness of an institution, such that actors who
once favored given institutional arrangements become decreasingly satisfied with them.
Theorists of institutional change in the social sciences often elide this difference,
Convention