Ironically, while lauding North's path-breaking work (Analytical Narratives
is dedicated to him), rational choice theorists have been slow to follow
his lead.95 Arguments about
path dependence still surface rarely in rational choice investigations,
even though they offer a fascinating window on the role of timing and sequence
in political development. The recent contribution of Anna Harvey, however,
provides a compelling example of the more richly historical political analysis
which North’s framework might facilitate for rational choice theorists.96
In Votes without Leverage, Harvey seeks to understand why women
voters became organized into American electoral politics through the major
parties rather than through the women's groups that had brought them to
politics in the first place during the effort to gain the suffrage. Harvey’s
argument, like many sequencing arguments discussed earlier, turns on positive
feedback processes surrounding organizational competition for limited political
space. Relying on North, she argues that once an organization establishes
linkages with social actors it gains formidable advantages over competitors,
because such linkages are subject to increasing returns. Organizations
gain information, learn by doing, and can take advantage of threshold effects
(having paid initial sort-up costs) that make new members cheaper and cheaper
to organize. Because of these first mover advantages, she argues, parties
seeking to reach distinct groups of voters often have to work primarily
through pre-existing interest groups rather than relying on direct appeals.
The twist comes, however, if the environment for organizing suddenly shifts.
In such circumstances, previous investments premised on a particular path
of mobilization may make organizational adaptation more difficult. According
to Harvey, this is precisely what happened to women’s groups. Well-organized
to fight the battle for women’s suffrage, they were poorly adapted once
suffrage had been won and the goal was to organize women for participation
in electoral politics. Electoral mobilization required an adaptation of
organizational structure and mobilizing strategies. Given the entrenchment
of existing organizational procedures, moving in this new direction took
time. Time, however, was precisely what these organizations did not have.
Political parties, recognizing a sizable new constituency, and already
oriented towards electoral mobilization, moved in first. By the time women's
groups had remade themselves for a new form of organizational competition,
it was too late.
One finally comes full circle to the arguments addressed in section I.
There are strong commonalities between Harvey’s work, influenced by North,
and Ertman’s analysis, growing out of the macrosociology of Tilly, Moore,
and Skocpol. Similarly, while Harvey and Shefter use very different styles
of argument and draw on distinct intellectual heritages, the differences
between their theoretical approaches are far narrower. Important disagreements
remain, of course - particularly over the relative priority given to the
quest for truly general propositions about politics versus the identification
of more middle-range, historically specific patterns. Furthermore, as arguments
about path dependence become embedded in more complicated arguments about
sequences, the tensions between the search for general propositions about
politics and the desire to make sense of concrete and specific social processes
are likely to intensify. At a minimum, however, there is room here for
constructive conversations about how to understand the unfolding of politics
over time.