Peters, Pierre, King (2005). The Politics of Path Dependency: Political Conflict in Historical Institutionalism.

critique of historical institutionalism:
Punctucated Equilibrium is no good; it ignored incremental changes and 'losing' policy ideas that caused a conflict, but were not victorious, and therefore did not make a visible, such as policy or structutal change, impact. It puts on rose colored classes, glossing over underlying conflicts that dont make themselves manifest as results.

By looking at policy formation as Kuhn describes paradigms (as big shifts) it over simplifies the process and is incomplete.

Four shortcomings of historical Institutionalism:
1. HI conceptualized change in terms of MAJOR events, and ignored incremental changes; smaller changes are defined away in HI, even if they ultimately lead to something significant (1277).
2. "Retrospective Rationality." HI identifies choisen policy options as logical and rational- complexities and uncertainities in policy formation are not shown; inlt the victorious policy recieves attention.. and when in does, in retrospect, it is seems as the obvious choice... even if there was debate, conflict and an opposition.
3. HI does not properly conceptualize or acct for political conflict; there is more political conflict... HI does not identify it all.
4. HI cannot explain political or policy change. Punctuated equilibrium is not adequet. "The focus on structires over action, on fixity over change, is not conducive to accounting for political change" (1278).