The Role of Culture, Historicity, and Human Agency in the Evolution of the State: A Case Against Cultural Fatalism
Abstract: I examine how the nature of the state and its relationship to its people are determined and evolve. I bring together differing contributions of traditional institutionalism to further an emerging evolutionary institutionalist discourse concerning the role played by culture and historicity, on one hand, and by individual actions and awareness, on the other, in shaping and reshaping the nature of the state. Such discourse is significant in understanding that, although inherited culture plays an important role in influencing the character of the state in a given society, the future of the state is not fully determined by its history. In equal measure, it depends on the volition of individuals who purposefully amend the state's institutions through rearranging power distribution. Using Russia's authoritarian state as a case in point, I demonstrate how this emerging evolutionary institutionalist discourse can circumvent ideological misuse of the institutionalist paradigm in non democratic societies.