Through Thelen's Lens: Layering, Conversion, Drift, Displacement and Exhaustion in the Development of Dutch Construction Regulation

Abstract

Historical institutionalism, and especially Kathleen Thelen’s take on it, have taken a flight in explaining institutional change. Theorizing on incremental change, and institutional change mechanisms such as layering, conversion, and drift are now widely used throughout the institutional change literature. This is a laudable achievement, but what is the true value of this particular strand of theorizing? This article first reviews the ever growing literature in this area, and then applies the theory and concepts discussed on a novel case – the development of over a hundred years of construction regulation in the Netherlands. It concludes that the theory and concept It finds that the theory and concepts have exceptional value in providing a single language to explain real-world examples of institutional change, but critiques the theory for a lack of clarity and predictive power.

Keywords: Incremental institutional change, historical institutionalism, policy analysis, conversion, layering, drift, displacement, exhaustion