Understanding Institutional Weakness

This Element introduces the concept of institutional weakness arguing that weakness or strength is a function of the extent to which an institution actually matters to social economic or political outcomes. It then presents a typology of three forms of institutional weakness: insignificance in which rules are complied with but do not affect the way actors behave; non-compliance in which state elites either choose not to enforce the rules or fail to gain societal cooperation with them; and instability in which the rules are changed at an unusually high rate. The Element then examines the sources of institutional weakness.