INSTITUTIONAL CHANGE THROUGH INTERSTITIAL EMERGENCE: The Growth of Alternative Dispute Resolution in U.S. Law, 1970-2000

Abstract

How can be explained the dramatic changes in the growth of informal dispute resolution as “alternatives” to adjudication between 1970-2000? This article gives an answer to this question by using the historical case of U.S. Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) in the last third of the 20th century to ground empirically a theory of interstitial emergence. By focusing on interstitial emergence, the article demonstrates how informal interaction across multiple organizational fields can provide cultural accounts for new formal structures. The analysis furthers the integration between institutional analysis in organizational and legal sociology, but does so by borrowing conceptual leads from social movement theory to elaborate and develop a framework for understanding institutional innovation and change. In doing so, it draws specific attention to issues of agency and emergent signification. The remainder of the article contains sections that narratively illustrate interstitial emergence and its dimensions using evidence from the U.S. ADR case. The conclusion extends the argument beyond ADR to consider alternative developments in the U.S. medical field and implications for institutional analysis, more generally.

Social Movements and Institutional Analysis

“…It has led to new understandings of the relations between movements and institutions, including how institutional reproduction and diffusion depend on mobilization, political resources and contestation (Thelen 2004;Hargrave & Van de Ven 2006). It supports research that goes beyond analyzing movements as 'extra-institutional' producers of multiple logics to consider also how movements and contestation are products of -and mobilize -contradictions and multiple models within fields (Strkyer 2000;Seo & Creed 2002;Morrill 2006). And it has let institutionalists interested in movements supplement images of change as disruption, conflict and settlement with analyses of how movements also work in an incremental and embedded fashion, producing trajectories of path creation or change as reconfiguration, recombination or layering (Clemens & Cook 1999;Streeck & Thelen 2005;Schneiberg 2007).…”

“…In Morrill's (2006) study of alternative dispute resolution (ADR), mobilization for alternatives and contestation themselves rested fundamentally on the presence and recombination of multiple logics of practice in the socio-legal field. In this case, institutional processes of bricolage, hybridization and innovation preceded broader mobilization.…”

“…They have not only begun to theorize how multiple logics within fields can motivate contestation and collective action (Stryker 2000;Seo & Creed 2002;Morrill 2006), they have also considered how existing institutional contexts shape mobilization and movements' capacities for producing change. Indeed, addressing relations between movements, institutional contexts and outcomes lays the foundation for more sophisticated analyses of power and agency.…”

A case study of the early institutionalization process of a restorative justice social movement organization.

“…Regardless of the debate, there is widespread agreement that when movements do progress towards institutionalization, their alternative ideals and goals are modified to maintain the established institution (Morrill, 2006) and they may become coopted by the established institution (Coy & Hedeen, 2005;Osterman, 2006). The mainline assumption in the literature is that the gradual move towards institutionalization and possibly co-optation, when it does occur, leads to the demise of a movement (Blumer, 1969;Mauss, 1975;Osterman, 2006;Tilly, 1978;Zald & Ash, 1966).…”

“…A dependable infrastructure did not develop until activists entered conventional policy channels and created relationships with the inside agencies and "retheorized" recycling programs as for-profit services that worked alongside established waste management programs (Schneiberg & Lounsbury, 2008, p. 655). Their work led to changing the discourse and cultural beliefs about recycled material as a commodity and transformed practices on a larger scale (see Morrill, 2006 for the example of the alternative dispute resolution movement). Further understanding the possibilities, benefits, and limitations of deliberate institutionalization or co-optation has the potential to advance the connections between institutional change and collective action dynamics.…”