INSTITUT FÜR HÖHERE STUDIEN INSTITUTE FOR ADVANCED STUDIES ABTEILUNG POLITIKWISSENSCHAFT DEPARTMENT OF POLITICAL SCIENCE

PUBLIC LECTURE

Paul Pierson University of California, Berkeley

What is Historical in Historical Institutionalism?

Monday, 19 June 2006, 16:00 IHS, Stumpergasse 56, 1060 Wien, HS II

The past decade has seen an outpouring of work in social theory that outlines the advantages of a historical – or more precisely, a temporal – approach to inquiry. This work both highlights new questions for social scientists and suggests distinctive answers to some established questions. It has significant implications for our choices of methods, as well as for some of the recent theoretical disputes in political science. This talk surveys these contributions and points to some prominent lines of on-going research and debate.

Paul Pierson is Professor of Political Science at the University of California, Berke- ley, teaching courses on comparative public policy, political economy and the wel- fare state. He is the author of Politics in Time: History, Institutions and Social Analy- sis (Princeton University Press, 2004); Dismantling the Welfare State? The Politics of Retrenchment in Britain and the United States (Cambridge University Press, 1994); editor of The New Politics of the Welfare State (Oxford University Press, 2001); and co-editor of European Social Policy Between Fragmentation and Integra- tion (Brookings Institution, 1995). His articles have appeared in such journals as the American Political Science Review, Comparative Political Studies, Governance, Politics and Society, Studies in American Political Development and World Politics as well as numerous edited volumes.

Stumpergasse 56, 1060 Wien, T +43-1-59991-166 F +43-1-59991-171 E [email protected] http://www.ihs.ac.at/