On the Fluidity of Institutional Change:Complex Interrelations Between Multiple Types of Institutional Work During the Serbian Transition

摘要

To extend the understanding of institutional change at the societal level, we explore the way in which multiple types of institutional work are interrelated, and how the interrelations affect both the institutional change and its outcome. Through an in-depth study of the Serbian transition between 2000 and 2008, our findings reveal first that this specific context expands the range of institutional work, for example, the pressure and capitalization work performed by the Mafia, tycoons, and opportunistic politicians in our case. Second, we highlight four complex characteristics of the interrelations between multiple types of institutional work: feedback loops, non-linearity, emergent properties, and discontinuity. We contribute to the neo-institutional literature by showing the importance to attend to the interrelations between multiple types of institutional work performed by different actors, as to understand institutional change, its fluidity, complexity, and its outcome.