Historical institutionalism has not yet grappled with the deeper intellectual challenges of “going global.” Understanding international, particularly global, institutions, requires attention to and theorizing of a global social context, one that does not rely on a national government in the background, ready to enforce laws and rules. It also requires theories about the global organizations themselves. In this chapter, the authors argue that a historical institutionalism that engages with the many varieties of sociological institutionalism would be a richer tradition that could more systematically examine the role of norms and ideas, thereby expanding its analytic range to institutional contexts beyond the state.
Henry Farrell and Martha Finnemore, “Global Institutions without a Global State,” Oxford Handbook on Historical Institutionalism, eds. Orfeo Fioretos, Tulia Falletti and Adam Sheingate (Oxford University Press: 2016). Also published in Orfeo Fioretos, International Politics and Institutions in Time (Oxford University Press: 2017).