Life and Death of an Institution: The case of collective wheat marketing in Australia

Since the 1980s, there has been renewed interest among political scientists in the role of institutions. An important strand of this 'new institutionalism' is historical institutionalism. Recent theoretical developments have sought to address the most obvious criticisms of the historical institutionalist approach, particularly the critique relating to its tendency to focus on explanations of stability. However, the institutional histories under consideration are generally incomplete as they do not include the entire life of the institution. Drawing on the history of collective wheat marketing in Australia, this article seeks to address this gap by considering a case in which strategies of institutional reproduction initially appeared to have managed change successfully but ultimately sowed the seeds of institutional demise. By considering the death as well as the life of an institution, we can gain a clearer picture of the effectiveness of institutional strategies of adaptation and change