High setup costs and sunk investment make institutional arrangements self-stabilizing.

Evidence

The design of political institutions and policy regimes often entails high initial set-up costs. These institutions and regimes often inspire specific, nontransferable investments by various political actors and increase the power of these actors to block change. The benefits of coordinating around an existing set of institutions and policies lends further stability to these arrangements by creating equilibria in which no group can do better by withdrawing or contesting the status quo. — Daryl Levinson and Benjamin I. Sachs, Political Entrenchment and Public Law, 197

Categorization

• XREF: Directly relevant to the reader’s own theorizing about institutional persistence — connects general path dependence literature (Arthur, David, Pierson) to ideological stickiness. — connects to: Mature institutions survive their founding purpose because members prefer sunk costs over new formation — Robert B. McCalla, NATO’s persistence after the cold war, 119; Increasing returns create self-reinforcing patterns that lock in dominant solutions and grow irreversible. — Jörg Sydow, Georg Schreyögg, and Jochen Koch, Organizational Path Dependence: Opening…, 44; Existing institutions get redirected toward new problems because sunk costs make replacement costly. — Robert B. McCalla, NATO’s persistence after the cold war, 119 (+4 more)

Broader Connections

• Increasing returns create self-reinforcing patterns that lock in dominant solutions and grow irreversible. #corroborates (0.88) — Jörg Sydow, Georg Schreyögg, and Jochen Koch, Organizational Path Dependence, 44
• Existing institutions get redirected toward new problems because sunk costs make replacement costly. #expands (0.86) — Robert B. McCalla, NATO’s persistence after the cold war, 119
• Sunk investments create hostage situations where premature termination is costly. #corroborates (0.85) — Diego Gambetta, Trust - Making and Breaking Cooperative…, 2532
• Self-reinforcing mechanisms drive organizations into stages of lock-in. #expands (0.84) — Jörg Sydow, Georg Schreyögg, and Jochen Koch, Organizational Path Dependence, 2
• Discourse creates the switching costs that lock institutions into old policies. #expands (0.82) — Georg Schreyögg and Jörg Sydow, The Hidden Dynamics of Path Dependence, 994
• Successful institutions can dissolve from their own premature success #complicates (0.74) — Angus Burgin, The Great Persuasion, 314