The Institutional Afterlife: How Political Actors Respond to Failed Institutional Design

So, we know from Robert Moser's fantastic work on Russia that institutional engineering can backfire spectacularly. The mixed electoral system was supposed to consolidate parties but instead led to their proliferation. But the story doesn't end in 1999 with the epilogue to his book. What I'm proposing is a systematic study of the "institutional afterlife." When elites design an institution that produces the exact opposite of its intended outcome, how do they react? This moves beyond the initial analysis of failure to examine the subsequent political process. Do they engage in institutional layering, scrapping, or gradual reform? Does the response depend on the severity of the failure, the power of the actors who benefited from the unexpected outcome, or the rigidity of the constitutional system? This would build directly on Moser's (2001) "Unexpected Outcomes" but shift the focus from the moment of deviation to the long-term process of institutional adjustment. It would also provide a fascinating counterpoint to cases like Drake and Skovgaard's (2024) study of fossil fuel subsidy reform, where institutions worked more or less as intended. By comparing cases of successful and failed design, we could develop a more general theory of institutional learning (or the lack thereof) in comparative politics.

References:

1. Unexpected Outcomes. R. Moser (2001).
2. Do Political Institutions Influence the Dismantling of Fossil Fuel Subsidies? Lessons from the OECD Countries and a Comparative Analysis of Canadian and German Production Subsidies. Evan Drake, Jakob Skovgaard (2024). Journal of Comparative Policy Analysis.