Political science identifies path dependence but cannot explain why inefficient policies begin.

Evidence

Therefore, in the literature related to political science, Pierson (2000a, 2004) presents analyses that identify path dependence and explains why these dependencies exist within politics, yet without convincing and theoretically deeply rooted explanations of the reasons why certain – potentially inefficient – policies were introduced in the first place. Therefore, in economics, as well as in political science, the process of path dependence to date largely constitutes a research field with a theoretical framework that is just emerging and is still incomplete (Garud and Karnøe, 2001; Schreyögg, Sydow and Koch, 2003; Beyer 2006; Koch 2008). — Georg Schreyögg and Jörg Sydow, The Hidden Dynamics of Path Dependence, 979

Categorization

• QUESTION: What are the actually documented cases where a rent-seeking story fails to explain an inefficient policy’s origin?
• DEFINE: Path dependence as an emerging, incomplete research framework distinguishes it from mature theories.