ON THE VIRTUES OF THE OLD INSTITUTIONALISM

Institutions are staffed and are created to do the job of regulating o rganizations. This staffing, and all the creative work that is involve d in financing, governing, training, and motivating institutional acti ons by that staff in organizations, has been lost in recent institutio nal theorizing. This staffing was central to the old institutionalism, which is why it looked so different. The argument is exemplified by a pplying the insights of classical institutionalists to the legitimacy of court decisions as determined by the law of evidence, to the legiti macy of competition and the destruction of other organizations by comp etition, to the noncontractual basis of contract in commitments to mai ntain competence to do the performances required in contracts, and to the failure of institutions of capitalist competition and the substitu tion of mafia-like enforcement of contracts in postcommunist Russia. T he institutions of the new institutionalism do not have enough causal substance and enough variance of characteristics to explain such vario us phenomena.