What does credibility theory has to say about institutional convergence?

The idea of convergence or the teleological principle of an ultimate final form has incited considerable debate and scholarly confusion (Radice 2000, Streeck and Thelen 2005), not least because empirical study has yielded a dazzling variety of institutional forms. (…). The notion of credibility, or what could perhaps be termed the ‘credibility thesis’, posits that even when rejecting the neo-liberal reading, we might in fact still be examining the question within the same paradigm, as we reason from the importance of form over function.” See P. Ho, “In Defense of Endogenous, Spontaneously Ordered Development: The Institutional Structure of China’s Rural Urban Property Rights”, Journal of Peasant Studies, 2013, 40/6, p. 1093 and 1096.

[ap_toggle title=”READ MORE” status=”close”]“Instead of focusing on what out of paradigmatic necessity must be considered an ‘empirical anomaly’ through the lens of neo-liberal institutional teleology and evolution, we had better first focus on the question of how institutions function, or fail to function, at a given time and place. Then, and only then, can we – through meticulous description of the ‘rules of the game’ that constitute the institution – establish what its form is. That scholarly endeavor – the meticulous description of institutions – is done far too little, yet is absolutely critical to understand the distinction between form and function.” See P. Ho, “In Defense of Endogenous, Spontaneously Ordered Development: The Institutional Structure of China’s Rural Urban Property Rights”, Journal of Peasant Studies, 2013, 40/6, p. 1096.[/ap_toggle]