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Building Complex
Temporal Explanations
of Crime
History, Institutions
and Agency
Stephen Farrall
Critical Criminological Perspectives
Series Editors
Reece Walters, Faculty of Law, Deakin University, Burwood,
VIC, Australia
Deborah H. Drake, Department of Social Policy & Criminology,
The Open University, Milton Keynes, UK
The Palgrave Critical Criminological Perspectives book series aims to
showcase the importance of critical criminological thinking when exam-
ining problems of crime, social harm and criminal and social justice. Crit-
ical perspectives have been instrumental in creating new research agendas
and areas of criminological interest. By challenging state defined concepts
of crime and rejecting positive analyses of criminality, critical criminolog-
ical approaches continually push the boundaries and scope of criminology,
creating new areas of focus and developing new ways of thinking about,
and responding to, issues of social concern at local, national and global
levels. Recent years have witnessed a flourishing of critical criminological
narratives and this series seeks to capture the original and innovative ways
that these discourses are engaging with contemporary issues of crime and
justice. For further information on the series and to submit a proposal
for consideration, please get in touch with the Editor: Josephine Taylor,
Josephine.Taylor@palgrave.com.
More information about this series at

http://www.palgrave.com/gp/series/14932
Stephen Farrall
Building Complex
Temporal
Explanations of Crime
History, Institutions and Agency
Stephen Farrall
University of Derby
Sheffield, UK
ISSN 2731-0604 ISSN 2731-0612 (electronic)

Critical Criminological Perspectives
ISBN 978-3-030-74829-6 ISBN 978-3-030-74830-2 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-74830-2
© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021

This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the
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The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc.
in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such
names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for
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The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and informa-
tion in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither
the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with
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Cover illustration: © Melisa Hasan
This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature
Switzerland AG
The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland
For Katie, Maddie and Tom.
Acknowledgments
During the writing of this book, I have benefitted from the insights of
numerous people, drawn from years of close collaboration. Most obvi-
ously, I have benefitted enormously from those people I worked with in
studying the impact of Thatcherite social and economic policies on crime
and the criminal justice system (Maria Grasso, Emily Gray, Will Jennings,
Phil Jones and Colin Hay most centrally). I also learnt much about how to
‘think like an historian’ from a close collaboration with Barry Godfrey and
David Cox during our studies of the various efforts to control and manage
offenders in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. More distantly,
I have benefitted from the years of diligent work by colleagues running
the British Crime Survey (and its successor), the British Social Attitudes
Survey, and the National Child Development and 1970 Birth Cohort
studies. None of this would have been possible without the generous
funding of the above projects from the likes of the ESRC, Leverhulme
Trust and British Academy, and I thank them all for their support.
vii
Praise For Building Complex Temporal
Explanations of Crime
“‘The tradition of all dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the

brains of the living’, claimed Marx in 1852. Stephen Farrall does not think
of the relations between past and present in such drastic or fateful terms.
Yet he is equally concerned with the laminations of past influences on our
present culture and conduct. Farrall has a rare capacity to connect quan-
titative observations of crime and control with an historical sensibility,
and with problems of social, sociological and political theory. For these
reasons Farrall is able in this book to offer refreshing new perspectives on
levels of explanation in thinking about crime, and to make the topic of
complexity seem not only accessible but invigorating. Farrall encourages
us to feel that we too can and should reach for solutions that are at once
‘historical, spatial, economic, cultural and agentic’.”
—Richard Sparks, School of Law, Univ of Edinburgh
ix
Contents
1 Introduction: Why Do We Need to Build Complex,

Temporal Explanations? 1
2 Recognising Complexity 9
3 Historical and Constructivist Institutionalisms 29
4 Why-Because Analyses 51
5 Realistic Evaluation 71
6 Where Have All the People Gone? Theories
of Structuration, Practice and Agency 89
7 Research Designs and Research Methods 111
8 An Exemplar of an Institutionalist, Temporally
Complex Explanation of Politics, Crime Rates,
the Criminal Justice System and Attitudes in Britain 123
9 Concluding Observations 137
Glossary of Key Terms 141

Bibliography 149
Index 159
xi
About the Author
Stephen Farrall is Research Chair in Criminology in the College of Busi-

ness, Law and the Social Sciences at the University of Derby, where he has
worked since 2019. Prior to this, he was Professor of Criminology and
Deputy Chair of the School of Law at the University of Sheffield (2007–
2018), Research Fellow and Senior Research Fellow in the Department
of Criminology at Keele University, and Research Officer in the Centre
for Criminological Research at the University of Oxford, where he also
completed his D.Phil. His research has often focused on the unfolding
over time of processes relating to crime and justice, and he has held
research grants from the Economic and Social Research Council, Lever-
hulme Trust and Ministry of Justice. His most recent publications include
papers on Thatcherite values and behaviours in the journals Political
Studies and British Politics, and Respectable Citizens—Shady Practices: The
Economic Morality of the Middle Classes, (2020, Oxford University Press,
with Susanne Karstedt), and which won the American Society of Crim-
inology’s Division of White Collar and Corporate Crime’s Outstanding
Book Award, 2020.
xiii
List of Figures
Fig. 1.1 Varying time frames of causes and outcomes 2

Fig. 4.1 Chen et al.’s WBA of the Capsizing of the Herald of Free
Enterprise 56
Fig. 4.2 a ‘Flat’ Regression Modelling of V1 and V2 on V3.
b ‘Temporally Structured’ Regression Modelling of V1
on V2 and V2 on V3 59
Fig. 4.3 SEM of Offending 62
Fig. 4.4 SEM of Economic Restructuring and Offending 63
Fig. 4.5 WBA of the Impact of Thatcherite Economic Policies
on Individual-Level Criminal Careers 66
Fig. 5.1 Basic ingredients of successful programmed social change
(from Pawson & Tilley, 1997: 74) 82
Fig. 5.2 Configuration for habitual offender acts (from Godfrey
et al., 2011) 84
Fig. 6.1 Restructuring Bourdieu’s theorization of agency
and structure (Source Mouzelis, 2008: 140) 96
xv
List of Tables
Table 4.1 The causal factors for the Herald Capsize 57

Table 4.2 The causal factors for the inset of individual-level
offending careers 65
xvii
CHAPTER 1
Introduction: Why Do We Need to Build

Complex, Temporal Explanations?
For some years now, I have been involved in a number of projects which—
in one way or another—have sought to explain some aspect of crime
through various lens. Aside from being about crime or responses to it,
these projects have all sought to understand the ways in which a number
of processes and influences have operated together, and, crucially, over
time. These processes, which I and my colleagues sought to disentangle
from one another, involved individuals and their decision-making, formal
organisations (such as courts, probation services, political parties and the
such like), institutions (such as families, ways of doing things), legal struc-
tures and other power making or shaping bodies (such as parliaments,
laws or formalised policies which structure governance systems such as the
welfare system). And each, in various ways, required us to think in some
depth about two things; one was change (be it social change, individual-
level change, organisational change or institutional change), and the other
was time.
Time is one of those variables which is inherently easy to measure.
We have seconds, minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, years and so on
with which to group bundles of time together and to make time ‘visible’
for analysis. We have also developed a whole range of research designs
to ‘trap’ time and to make it help with our explanatory work. Longitu-
dinal research, before and after studies, follow-ups and historical research
© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 1

Switzerland AG 2021
S. Farrall, Building Complex Temporal Explanations of Crime,
Critical Criminological Perspectives,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-74830-2_1
2 S. FARRALL
Time Frame of Outcome(s)

Short Long
Time Frame of
Short A C
Cause(s)
Long B D
Fig. 1.1 Varying time frames of causes and outcomes
are all attempts to trace the ways in which things are different between
what we might simply call ‘t1’ and ‘t2’. Of course, we have learnt to pull
a similar trick with space; we know that processes might operate differ-
ently between two different places. We don’t expect that any two cities
will be exactly the same and we have become accustomed to referring
to local cultures, features of the architecture or layout of the cities being
compared, or characteristics of the residents who live there. But, I would
contend, we have not advanced our thinking about time and temporal
changes to quite the same degree.
However, and in some respects anticipating some of the issues to be
touched upon in Chapter 3 (on historical1 and constructivist institu-
tionalisms), there are different time frames for temporal explanations
which can be constructed. Pierson (2004: 81) introduces four of these,
based on the time frame of the cause (long or short) and the time frame
of the outcome(s) (again long or short). Pierson uses examples from
the physical sciences (tornados, earthquakes and so on), but I have used
different examples (Fig. 1.1).
Let us imagine various situations related to the cooking and consump-
tion of food, not all of which go according to plan. In A (a short causal
time frame with a short causal outcome) I am cooking a soup in a pan.
Lifting the pan off the hob, I step on the cat and trip over, spilling the
soup on the floor. The causal process was short (tripping over the cat)
and the outcomes were almost immediate (spilt soup, scolded cat). In
B (a long causal time frame with a short time frame for the outcome)
I am cooking pasta. The pasta is boiling in a pan of water when the
phone rings. I answer the phone, become distracted and return to the
1 Words in bold are outlined in further detail in the glossary at the end of the book.
1 INTRODUCTION: WHY DO WE NEED TO BUILD … 3
kitchen 40 minutes later to find the pan boiled dry and the pasta burnt
on to the base of the saucepan. The causal process was long (the time
I was talking on the phone) but the outcome was immediate (ruined
pan and burnt pasta). When we turn to those processes with long-term
outcomes, we have first C, a short-term causal process followed by a rela-
tively long-term outcome. As an example of C, I have baked a casserole
in the oven and pick it up to carry it to the table to serve. I have, however,
forgotten to use oven gloves to protect my hands and severely burn these.
The cause is short (picking up the casserole) and the outcomes are long
term (burnt palms and fingers which take weeks to fully recover). In D
I have decided to try to eat a balanced diet, avoid eating too much red
meat and consume more fresh fruit and vegetables (a commitment which
would need to last several years to have any lasting impact, a long causal
time frame). As a result of committing to this over the course of several
years, I live a longer life in better health than I would have had I eaten
otherwise (an outcome with a long time frame). As well as the differ-
ences in the time frames of the causal processes and outcomes, there are
other differences too. A is easy to predict at the outset of the process;
as soon as the foot meets the cat, the trip is almost certain to happen.
With D on the other hand, the diet will be associated with the longer life
lived in better health, but is harder to predict; it only survives if I refrain
from eating other ‘sin’ foods such as alcohol, chocolate and refined sugars
and could in any case be disrupted by other events (even people in good
health are involved in road accidents or fall over on the ice). But the
overall message remains the same: assessing the speed and ‘interruptabil-
ity’ of causal processes can require a great deal of unpacking. In short,
as explanations become ‘stretched’ over longer periods of time, they tend
to become more complex. As explanations become more complex, so we
need to take greater care over how we construct, use and test them.
On another level, unpacking the ways in which the various causal influ-
ences operated in the empirical research projects I have been involved in
has required me to draw upon ideas from a range of allied social sciences.
At various points, I have drawn upon thinking from theories of struc-
turation from sociology and social theory, theories of complexity from
the physical sciences (but interpreted and remoulded by sociologists for
the purposes of social science explanations), theories of institutions and
institutional change from political scientists, theories of accident investi-
gation and theories of realism drawn from evaluation studies. All of these
I draw upon herein.
4 S. FARRALL
To varying degrees of success, all of these have helped me to think

about the processes I was studying and to analyse the data I had about
them. Yet many, I realised on reflection, were not commonly used by my
colleagues in criminology. This struck me as curious. All of the theories
which I had begged, borrowed and stolen from were attempts to grapple
with the sorts of data and intellectual problems which many criminologists
faced; problems of complex causation, in which non-linear processes are
at play, or in which historical influences still have explanatory power, but
which are often unacknowledged by the social actors being studied or the
analysts themselves, or in which one needed to make some sort of effort
to integrate individual-level actions, motivations and desires with macro-
level processes and influences. A lot of criminology, it struck me, was
bordering on being rather ahistorical. There are, of course, key exceptions
to this, most notably the cohort of scholars who refer to themselves self-
consciously as ‘crime historians’, and who have benefitted from training
in historical thinking and methods of analysis.
Why Do We Need Complex Explanations?

There is a rule in scientific explanation which is drummed into
researchers; simple explanations are the best. The logic goes that if you
can largely explain the outcome of interest with one or two variables, then
why both adding the third, fourth and fifth? The third, fourth and fifth
variables add little and serve only to clutter up the explanation, adding
words and ideas where they are not needed. Known as Ockham’s Razor,
this logic seeks to create simple explanations of the physical and social
worlds around us. Simple solutions are easy to explain to busy policy-
makers, members of the public and to our colleagues. It is the same
logic, which underpins the question often posed when training people
to talk about their research findings: ‘If you were on the news, and had
30 seconds to explain your research, what would you say?’. As straightfor-
ward as it is to be able to say, for example, that ‘the industrial revolution is
a major cause of climate change’, this misses much of what does account
for climate change. First of all, not every part of the world was involved
in that thing we call the industrial revolution. Many parts of the world
now refer to themselves as ‘post-industrial’, and some politicians remain
sceptical of the idea of climate change, and seek to downplay or deny it.
Furthermore, the ‘early days’ industrial revolution was powered by renew-

able energy sources such as wind, water or animals. If you want to explain
climate change, you need to build explanations, which are far from simple.
Look at a map of a city or town you know well. In some cases, the city
or town centre will have lots of streets, arranged in a higgledy-piggledy
fashion; streets may change direction suddenly, may change widths or
come to abrupt ends. In other cases, the streets will form a grid; 90-
degree right-angles and parallel lines dominate. Further out, some streets
might be more densely packed, with schools, parks and other amenities
littered within them. Prisons, large railways yards, big hospitals, major
motorways or airports will be further out, but connected back into
the centre from their peripheral positions. Now imagine walking from
the centre to one of these peripheral locations; in the centre, you start
near the buildings associated with governance (city halls, banks, police
stations), large shopping stores and malls; walking out you pass offices,
rail and road transportation systems, then housing (some in poor condi-
tion), then canals and, perhaps, disused factories, railway marshalling yards
or other sites of ‘heavy’ production. Our cities—despite all their posh new
technologies, integrated transportation hubs and swanky hotels—tell the
tale of the past; of old streets first laid down on bare earth; of old, now
outmoded, industries whose buildings and infrastructure scar the edges
of our cities (or which have been rebuilt as ‘posh’ living quarters); of the
housing, once built for the heroes of the industrial revolution to live in,
but now, with the loss of such work, used as dormitories for the poor
and dispossessed. Our cities bear the markings of the past two or three
hundred years, at least, and their spatial variation makes present what is
hard to see; time and its passing. To understand a large city and its spatial
configuration of sites of production, consumption, control, service and
movement requires us to understand its past, the forces which shaped
it, and the ideas which were being used in its creation. The answer to
the question ‘why is there more crime in one urban neighbourhood than
in another?’ demands, then, answers which draw on historical, spatial,
economic, cultural and agentic explanations.
In short, It too demands a complex answer.
But these answers aren’t just complex in that they need a lot of
explaining, they are complex in that they have multiple causal paths,
are contingent on other outcomes, can bifurcate and causes can at times
‘swap’ their roles with some causes fading out and others becoming more
dominant. In other words, their complexity also stretches over time. When
6 S. FARRALL
explanations start to stretch over time, we need to think about things like
duration, speed, strength of relationships, delayed processes and residual
or legacy affects.
This short book brings together some of the theories I have drawn
upon in the hope that they may be further used by criminologists (and
others) in their own analyses and thinking. The book seeks to explore the
ways in which temporal processes can be tackled in criminological analyses
in such a way that the inherently complex nature of what we study, and
the existing theories of causation being tested, can be explored in greater
depth and with greater rigour.
Outlining the Rest of the Book

Although it is probably fair to say that the chapters in the books could
pretty much be read in any order the reader wished, I have tried to order
them in a way, which means that some of my basic beliefs about the world
are encountered first. The first chapter, then, is about complexity and
about how one can use some of the ideas from theories of complexity
to unpack processes, which criminologists might be interested in. This
chapter explores some of the basic principles of complexity, and deals with
how it might be examined in terms of the analyses of social systems, but
also touches on how complexity might affect individuals and their life-
courses. Following from this, in Chapter 3, I deal with one body of work,
which was key in the projects I undertook (with a number of colleagues)
to explore and assess the lasting legacy of Thatcherism for crime in Britain.
This body of work has become to be known as historical institutionalism,
and I incorporate within that chapter both some of the critiques of it
(such as what is known as constructivist institutionalism) and some of
the other ideas from political science which share key similarities (such
as comparative historical analyses, process tracing and punctuated equi-
librium). The ideas in this chapter are useful for studying processes of
change in which ideas play a role in the eventual outcomes observed,
and in which the changes affect organisations, institutions and individuals,
but in which past decisions and social forms still affect the processes and
outcomes. There are also some lessons for comparative analyses contained
within it towards the end.
Chapter 4 deals with a body of work, which I have not previously

used (but do so herein) and which was developed by those wishing to
explain why particular disasters in maritime, rail or aviation took place.
Why-Because Analyses (WBA) seek to work ‘backwards’ in time from an
outcome (the disaster) identifying each key decision or failure along the
way. In this respect, they can be seen as an alternative version of process
tracing (which starts with the input and follows it forwards in time to the
outcome[s]). The ideas in this chapter are useful for those seeking the
ways in which key decisions, processes, normal rules of doing things and
so on are ‘in play’ in accounting for a particular outcome. It involves a
careful tracing back of causal processes and their role in producing the
outcome of interest, therefore encouraging us to think about the causes
of causes. Chapter 5 deals with the work undertaken by Pawson and Tilley
during the 1990s on the best ways of evaluating programmatic interven-
tions (such as a prison-based employment scheme, or a crime reduction
programme of some sort). Their work was very much a critique of what
they termed ‘OXO’ evaluations. The ideas and ways of thinking about
causality which they developed are useful for those wishing to study delib-
erate policy or practice interventions (such as in probation, health care
or schooling) and the extent to which they operated as planned and
produced the outcomes desired.
Much of the above—but not all of it—has said little about individual
agency. Chapter 6 reviews some of the key theories of structuration, and
attempts to show how insights from these can be used in developing
theories about change, which bridge structural and individual levels of
explanation. Chapters 7 and 8 are both very short, but achieve different
goals. Chapter 7 discusses various issues relating to research design and
research methodologies. If we want to study complex processes, we need
to think about how best these can be ‘captured’ in our research designs,
and this chapter attends to that matter. Chapter 8 provides an exemplar of
how to tackle explanations of change at the individual level, at the cohort
level and at the macro level via a re-examination of work I was involved
in as part of the examination of the legacy of Thatcherism. This chapter
draws on publications which, for example, show how the ‘right to buy’
one’s council home extended in 1980 resulted in individuals born in the
early 1970s becoming drawn into crime in a way in which those born just
over a decade before them were not. I also discuss the fact that cohorts of
8 S. FARRALL
individuals tend to exhibit different social attitudes depending on which

party was in power when they were socialised. Finally, I provide some
very short concluding thoughts as Chapter 9, and a Glossary of terms
used after this.
Reference
Pierson, P. (2004). Politics in time. Princeton University Press.
CHAPTER 2
Recognising Complexity
Abstract This chapter outlines what is meant by the term ‘complexity’,

outlining some of the key aspects of this style of explanation and show
how such explanations work in practice. Given that the concept of time
and changes over time is so central to theories of complexity, we start with
the notion of there being different ‘levels’ and ‘speeds’ of explanations,
which are needed to explain criminological (and other) phenomena. The
chapter explores some of the forms of complex relationships which might
exist and how to approach the analysis of such relationships. This chapter,
then, explores some of the basic principles of complexity, and deals with
how it might be examined in terms of the analyses of social systems, but
also touches on how complexity might affect individuals and their life
courses.
Keywords Complexity · Time · Temporal explanations
Irrespective of what we may think of it, we live in an increasingly complex

society. This is not, for one moment, however, to construct past societies
as some sort of easy-peasy set of arrangements, for they were not. Rather
it is an acknowledgement that in the modern world, all sorts of different
social groups, with varying degrees of overlapping cultural values exist.

Switzerland AG 2021
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-74830-2_2
10 S. FARRALL
There are several different levels of geographical governance (from local

governments to regional bodies, national-level governance systems and in
some cases international unions of nations (such as the UK, EU, UN,
USA and African Union). These ‘layers’ of control and regulation, each
with their own set of rules and regulatory frameworks, also extend back-
wards in time; decisions taken years, even decades ago, are still present in
much of the frameworks through which people lead their lives. Similarly,
the number of organisations which many people will routinely deal with
during the course of a day may be quite numerous (schools, transporta-
tion systems, employers, different departments within one’s workplace,
other firms or businesses one deals with during the working day as part
of one’s work and so on) all shape daily routines. How ought we best
to think about and recognise this complexity? How ought we to try to
build it into our analyses, or in some cases, how can we best decide which
bits we can ‘hold constant’ and not need to pay much attention to? This
chapter seeks to explore some of the thinking around complexity—albeit
based on a set of terms and thinking developed in the physical sciences.
However, by way of a route into this topic, lets us commence with a
discussion of which levels of explanation—and the speeds with which
explanations unfold—we might want to be interested in.
Thinking About Levels (and Speeds) of Explanation

When trying to explain social and economic phenomena, analysts must
make decisions about the level (or levels) of explanation at which they
wish to work. In some cases, the individual level is sufficient. Take for
example a study of the decision-making of burglars (which house is the
more attractive proposition, and why so?). This might be approached by
asking burglars themselves why they chose one house over another (and
so individual-level research designs are sufficient). Alternatively, if one
was trying to explain why it is that some parts of a particular city are
good places to burgle, for example, one might wish to work at a meso-
level, and to explore the recent economic fortunes of that part of the city
(and especially in relation to other areas of the city and their levels of
wealth), which sorts of possessions are routinely found in that part of the
city, how easy it is to shift them on after the burglary, and how the local
residents and police have responded to previous burglaries. If one were
instead thinking about the causes of, for example, a nation-wide policy of
decarceration (whereby a large proportion of serving prison inmates were
2 RECOGNISING COMPLEXITY 11
released from prison and fewer new ones ‘recruited’ into prison), one may
wish to look at national-level sentencing policies, acts of parliament and
so on.
Of course, this trichotomy is in many respects a false one. Burglars
‘don’t come from nowhere’; there are reasons why some decide to start
breaking into other people’s home and which can be associated with levels
of unemployment and the economic needs that brings, or the responses of
some communities when jobs disappear (such as increased rates of drug
addiction, which may fuel the need for ‘easy cash’). Hence how (and
where) an individual decides to select which house to steal from is partly
a function (albeit a more removed one) of economic conditions in their
immediate locale. Similarly, the number of people prepared to sell heroin
in an area is partly a function of how many people want to buy such
drugs in that area, and the much wider availability of alternative forms
of income (be they either legal or illegal). Given that periods of impris-
onment disrupt legitimate employment careers, the number of those who
have little option but to deal in drugs is partly also a function of economic
processes (driving them and others out of the local economy) and penal
policies (which may operate to make some individuals less likely to be
recruited by employers looking for those with reputable pasts and the
requisite skills). So these different ‘levels’ collapse down on each other
when we start to think about both causes and the causes of causes. Never-
theless, they provide a useful way of structuring one’s enquiries and are
an aid to interpretation.
It was these sorts of questions, which my colleagues1 and I asked
ourselves when we started to explore the impact and legacy of Thatcherite
social and economic policies on UK society and then crime rates. We soon
realised that, in order to understand to its fullest extent both Thatcherism
and its impact on crime in England and Wales, we need to think about
all of these levels, and some additional ones too. The swing towards
that thing which we now think of as ‘Thatcherism’ by the Conservative
Party was something which has been detected as starting in the 1950s
(Green, 1999). Thus we need to acknowledge the role of individuals and
small collections of individuals from the 1950s through to the 1970s
and beyond in the build-up to the policies of the 1980s. Similarly, we
cannot for one moment ignore the global crisis of the early 1970s (often
1 These colleagues included principally Emily Gray, Maria Grasso, Colin Hay, Will
Jennings, and Philip Mike Jones.
12 S. FARRALL
referred to as the oil crisis) which, if not ‘starting’ the discussion of the
deficiencies of the ‘post-war consensus’ (itself another construct, since
some never accepted its basic premise, Green, 1999), certainly focused
minds on it more than they may have been before. In addition to these
‘levels’, we needed to locate and understand Thatcherism as both the
product of specific challenges to the UK, and as part of a wider swing
towards neoliberal and neoconservative governments in the late 1970s
and early 1980s (in the US and Canada most obviously, but also in West
Germany, Australia and New Zealand, see Taylor, 1990). Within each of
these countries, particular individuals played key roles in developing first
critiques and later policies which were pursued (to varying degrees) by the
likes of Margaret Thatcher, Ronald Reagan, Bob Hawke, Roger Douglas,
Ruth Richardson and Helmut Kohl. Key interest groups emerged during
these periods and they too played roles in shaping policies and reflecting
and moulding public sentiments. Of course, that thing called ‘the public’
also played a huge role in these matters too; they voted for such parties
and their opinions started to feed back (via surveys) into thinking by
politicians in government and in opposition. As such, our project had
to grapple with various and varying levels of explanation. At times, public
opinions are crucial in our story (Jennings et al., 2012); at other times,
what key individuals in positions of political power did (or did not do)
was key (Farrall et al., 2016); at other points, we can see the legacy of
previous ideas and systems of thought working their way through how
current problems were approached, thought about and responded to (see
Farrall et al., 2020 on the concept of political legacies).
Another consideration needs to be given attention too, however. Ours
was a project which could be approached with a focus on just the period
between 1979 and 1990 (or 1997). However, to do this would be to fail
to locate crime, policies about crime, other social and economic policies,
the Conservative Party, ‘Thatcherism’ and a whole raft of other key issues
in their wider social, political and economic contexts. Whilst our project
was a heady mix of a criminological focal point seen (partly) through
the lenses of political science, it was also a project which was steeped in
historical insight. This, for us, meant not just thinking about levels of
explanation, but also about speeds of explanations too. ‘Speeds’ is delib-
erately plural here, for no two processes run at exactly the same speed.
Let us take, as an example, the 1988 Education Reform Act. This act
first came into being in the mid to late 1980s, as the Conservative Party
started to look ahead (in 1986) to an anticipated third electoral victory
(which came in 1987). Previously, little had been said about education
by Thatcher’s education secretaries (despite her having been secretary for
education in the 1970 government). In 1986, there was a marked shift
in thinking, as new right approaches came to dominate the government’s
approach to education and schooling (Tomlinson, 1989: 183). Indica-
tions of this shift in thinking came during the 1987 Election, when it
was announced that if the Tories were to be re-elected, schools would be
allowed to ‘opt out’ of Local Education Authority (LEA) control (Whitty
& Menter, 1989: 47). The resulting 1988 Education Reform Act was
to radically change secondary education in the UK. The 1988 Education
Reform Act fully came into power on the 1st of April, 1990. This act
allowed schools to opt out of LEA control, transferred the management
of schools from LEAs to school governors, allowed for ‘open enrolment’
(in which parents were offered choice of schools for their children) and
introduced the National Curriculum (Dorey, 1999: 146). Whilst, previ-
ously, education had been a low priority for the government (McVicar,
1990: 138), the aim of the 1988 act was to make a radical break with
the earlier philosophy (Tomlinson, 1989: 185–186). Staff–student ratios
rose throughout the 1980s and 1990s, arguably leading to greater disrup-
tion in classes, more exclusions and greater levels of staff absenteeism. In
1992, the first league tables of school exams were published (Timmins,
2001: 519). These had the unfortunate side effect of encouraging schools
to exclude unruly children (school exclusions rose throughout the 1990s
until reaching a peak of 12,668 in 1996–1997; DFeS, 2001). Dumped
on the streets, excluded children only served to cause further problems
for local residents and the police (Timmins, 2001: 566). Bynner and
Parsons (2003: 287) show that those in school between 1975 and 1986
had twice the rate of temporary suspensions (15% for males and 6% for
females) as the generation of children before them (7% for males and 3
per for females). So one of the upshots of this act was that an increasing
number of children were excluded from schools, and this was associated
with increases in low level but persistent antisocial behaviour in the mid-
1990s. Thus decisions taken in the mid-1980s took a decade or so to
produce outcomes which were related to crime. However, as Thompson
(2014) shows, Conservative economic policies (inspired by monetarism)
had much more immediate effects on businesses (so much so that mone-
tarism ceased to be pursued as a policy fairly early on in the life span
of the Thatcher governments, due to its negative impacts on businesses,
14 S. FARRALL
Thompson, 2014: 39). Thus an understanding of the impact of national-

level policies had in one case (education) a slow-burning effect, whilst
economic policy had a much more immediate effect.
In this respect, when thinking about why Thatcherism emerged when
it did, and the impacts which it might have had on crime in England and
Wales, several different processes were unfolding at different times and at
different speeds. Some of the slowest moving and longest processes relate
to the sentiments of sections of the Tory Party after the 1945 general
election defeat and the eventual resurfacing of these in the early 1970s.
This set of instincts and beliefs took time to be shaped into political
ideas and still longer to develop an institutional basis from which they
could be articulated and (if and when needed) defended. Nevertheless,
these eventually started to form sufficient critical mass to make electoral
change a possibility and, once the ideas had been fully worked though
into policy proposals, to start to make decisive in-roads into the founda-
tions of the post-war consensus. Some of the changes undertaken by the
early Thatcher governments initially altered, for example, the ownership
of housing and the sorts of economic environments people lived in. Over
time, these started to alter the landscape of crime in England and Wales,
and we started to see dramatic increases in crime throughout the 1980s
and into the early 1990s. As argued elsewhere, and in the context of New
Right thinking, rises in crime started to be registered with members of
the public and hence, eventually politicians and then started to form the
basis of policy formulation. Thus shifts in crime policies in the mid-1990s
were the outcomes of changes which can be traced in various ways back
to seemingly unrelated policy domains and the changes in these in turn
related to changes in thinking within the Tory Party. The causes appear
to have operated in causal chains, been long-term, very slow-moving, and
incremental. This shows the extent to which some of the causal processes
which we, as criminologists, might be interested in, unfold over quite
long periods of time, and have varying speeds and operate at a range of
levels of explanation.
Forms and Types of Complex Relationships

What evidence is there for the existence of complex relationships, and
further complex relationships which are influenced by temporal processes?
The existing social science literature, some of which has adopted
approaches referred to as comparative historical analyses (described in
Chapter 3), has pointed to all of the following processes (Hall, 2003:
383):
i. Cases in which an increase in x leads to an increase in y, but addi-

tional cases in which an increase in y was caused by a different set
variable (known as equifinality, Bennett & Checkel, 2015: 19).
ii. Cases in which x leads to y at time 1, but z leads to y at time 2.
iii. Cases in which an increase in x leads to an increase in y at time 1,
but not at time 2.
iv. Cases in which an increase in x leads to an increase in y for some
cases, but is modified by z for other cases.
v. Cases in which an increase in an outcome (y) depends on many
other variables, whose values may (or may not) be dependent upon
one another.
vi. Cases in which an increase in x leads to an increase in y, which,
over time, tends to increase x.
vii. Cases in which both x and z simultaneously lead to changes in an
outcome (y).
viii. Cases in which x is an important variable in the onset of a process,
but in which other variables determine the progression of that
process.
For example (as an example of iv), Jacobs and Kleban (2003) find that
rates of imprisonment can be reasonably well modelled using the murder
rate, the rate of births out of wedlock, the percentage of ethnic minori-
ties in a society and the GDP. However, the same model performs far
better when political governance regimes (federalist or corporativist) are
included (suggesting that some relationships can be mediated by other
processes). Similarly, Sutton (2004) finds that the relationship between
business cycles and imprisonment rates was mediated by political regime.
Atkinson (2000: 364–365) notes that between the end of the Second
War World and the late 1970s, economic inequality in the UK declined.
Between 1979 and 1985 it increased, and was due to unemployment.
From 1985 to 1990, however, the inequalities were due largely to govern-
ment policies (an example of ii). As an example of viii, see O’Rand
(2009: 125) who reports that education levels influence the onset of some
illnesses, but income and healthcare shape its progression. Similarly, and as
(an example of iii), consider the relationship between age and likelihood
16 S. FARRALL
of marriage. Between 18 and 40, every year unmarried increases the like-
lihood that an individual will marry the following year. However, after
40, each additional year unmarried decreases the likelihood of marriage
the following year (George, 2009: 167). In addition, and as (an example
of vi), Jennings et al. find that the relationship between unemployment
and the crime rate increased on a year-on-year basis (2012). Key thinkers
in this tradition have started to refer to the idea of ‘causal packages’ of
processes which operate in tandem, even if not all may be present in all
cases (Thelen & Maloney, 2015: 7). As such, this approach enables the
analyst to approach matters in a nondeterministic manner (since causal
mechanisms interact with the context in which they occur and operate,
the outcome cannot be determined a priori, Trampusch & Palier, 2016:
6; Pawson & Tilley, 1997). What these observations suggest is that the
assumption that a cause must work in all cases (known as ‘constant cause’
thinking, Levitsky & Way, 2015: 97) may be incorrect; causes may be
contingent on other factors which mediate their impact.
In essence, the causal processes identified by such studies point to the
problems of identifying and teasing out the interactions between causes
and contexts. Ragin (1987) pointed to the possibility of multiple conjec-
tural causation. This is the phenomenon whereby an outcome is caused
not just by the operation of one or two variables, but by a diverse combi-
nation of many factors some of which may be present in some cases but
not in others. In short, in country 1, cause A may result in outcome
C, whilst in country 2, cause B results in outcome C, depending on the
specific context in each country. Whilst structural equation modelling (in
which multiple causal processes can be modelled and in which structural
variance between countries can be tested formally) shares some prop-
erties with regression, its abilities to handle multiple and differentiated
causal processes significantly improve upon ‘basic’ regression modelling,
the routes of the causal theorising lie in systematic case studies. Taken as a
whole, this body of work suggests that methodologies, which assume (and
seek to find) cross-national equivalence may contain various weaknesses
which, in turn, may mean that incorrect causal inferences are drawn. Law-
like statements ought to be avoided, or treated with scepticism (Pouliot,
2015: 237).
Complexity and Causation

One of the most basic concepts in scientific research—and one which
has worked its way into common parlance is the idea of correlation. The
idea is that as the values on one variable rise, so the values on another
rise too. An example might be the relationship between the height of
a tree and its weight; taller trees will tend to weigh more. This is what
might be referred to as a linear relationship. As the values of one vari-
able (tree height) increase the other (tree weight) will increase in a linear
fashion. This idea forms the basis of a lot of statistical procedures, but
particularly correlation and linear regression. One of the basic principles
of complexity in scientific research and analysis, however, is the idea that
the relationships between three or more variables are not always linear, or
if they are linear, the nature of that relationship may not be the same for
all groups being analysed. This implies that there are interactions between
variables. Byrne (1998: 2) describes interaction (the process by which the
relationship between two variables is modified by the value of a third) as
a ‘grudging recognition’ that the impact of variables is not simply linear.
So, for example, whilst it may well be the case the taller trees weigh more,
the relationship between height and weight may be stronger for some
species of trees. So oaks (tall and broad) may exhibit a stronger relation-
ship between height and weight, than, say, elm trees, which grow tall, but
generally have thinner trunks than oaks.
It is commonly held that for a system or process to exhibit complexity,
it requires a minimum of three variables (Brown, 1995: 9). As such, the
outcome of any social process is not merely a sum of other variables,
but is affected by the relationships between several variables, meaning
that causal processes are contingent upon earlier states and conditions.
In reality, as we shall see shortly, this often means that outcomes have
multiple causes, and that these causes interaction with one another
(Byrne, 1998: 20; Lee, 1997: 22). However, despite the seeming random-
ness of causal processes, their outcomes usually fall within a known set of
boundaries. That is to say, that whilst we will not know exactly what the
outcome of a process may be, we have a pretty good idea of the range of
outcomes, which are probable. As such, whilst social processes are chaotic,
this ‘chaos’ is determined—in other words it has limits.
But this is to only partially explain why a system is complex. One of
the ‘hidden variables’, that is a variable, which is ‘at play’ but which is not
being explicitly acknowledged, is time. It is not simply the case that for a
18 S. FARRALL
system to be complex it requires three (or more) variables. As an example,

how much I spend on a meal in a restaurant is dependent on how hungry
I am, how much money I have to (or want to) spend and how appetising
the meals look. So, we have our three requisite variables, but does this
make this a complex process? I would say not. What is missing is the
inclusion of a temporal variable. It is the interaction of these variables over
time, which is what makes it a complex process, since it is the temporal
dimension, which allows for processes like feedback loops to emerge. So
rewriting the above non-complex example into a more complex one we
might get something like this: The amount of weight I put on (or lose)
during a six-month period is influenced by how often I eat out, how much
I spend (and therefore how much I eat) when I eat out, and the calorific
value of the meals I eat (We’ll assume that there is no change in my
activity levels during those six months). So, if I mainly eat more expensive
meals made using only the best fresh produce, forego fatty foods and
concentrate on fruit and vegetables, at the end of those six months, I
ought to have lost weight when compared to a situation in which three
times a week I ate at cheaper restaurants where less nutritious ingredients
are used, and where the food is deep-fat fried and formed from processes
meats. Complex systems only produce (initially) hard to predict outcomes
because of the mediating influence of a fourth variable, time.
The interaction effects of variables mean that, over time, different
outcomes are produced (Byrne, 1998: 28; Price, 1997: 11). Bifurcation
means that during a process, either X or Y will occur depending on A.
If A reaches a certain threshold, Y will occur, if it does not, then the
outcomes will be X. There is no reason why this should be limited to
only two outcomes, or why bifurcation points should not be sequential.
Bifurcation points can ‘cascade’ over time producing increasingly stark
differences in outcomes (for example, see Fig. 9.1 in Farrall, 2002: 165).
Closely related to bifurcation points is the principle of sensitivity to initial
conditions (often referred to as the ‘butterfly effect’, Turner, 1997: xxix).
This principle holds that even very small variations in an initial condition
have the potential to lead to hugely differing outcomes. For example, the
difference between being below a threshold compared to being above it
may be very small, but the outcomes (X or Y) may themselves be substan-
tially different from one another. For example, if a student needs to score
50% on an end of year test to pass and proceed to the next level of their
studies, then a relatively small difference in test scores (49% vs. 50%) will
lead to quite different outcomes, passing to the next level of study or not.
Any system may, of course, contain various ‘pathways’ through it. For
example, at time one there maybe 1000 people, of whom 500 are married.
At time two, of these 1000 people, there may still be 500 married peoples.
This apparent stability may in fact hide differing pathways of marriages
over time. For example, some of our 1000 people who started married
may have divorced, and similarly, those initially unmarried may have
become married by time two. This very basic observation implies that
unless the two groups are differentiated at the aggregate level one runs
the risk of (incorrectly) assuming that there had been no change over
time when in fact there had been considerable change between times one
and two (Horsfall & Maret, 1997: 184). In essence, and drawing upon
Byrne’s (1998: 2–28) use of complexity theories, a set of core statements
can be made. These are:
• that complex social processes have multiple causes;

• that, these causes are not necessarily additive, in other words, the
outcome is not simply the sum of the separate effects;
• that small differences in initial conditions may, over time, or
following specific bifurcation points, produce big differences in
eventual outcomes;
• that many outcomes, nevertheless, fall within a range of known or
calculable outcomes; and
• that multiple pathways exist, such that different cases can get from
the similar initial states to similar end states via different trajectories.
Theorists of complexity place a heavy emphasis on the fact that small

differences in initial conditions can result, over time, in disproportionate
outcomes. For Urry, this means that ‘minor changes in the past are able
to produce potentially massive effects in the present or future. Such small
events are not “forgotten”’ (2003: 23). This observation comes from
the study of weather forecasts. Numerically small differences in values
(for example differences at the 3rd decimal, say between .002 and .005)
might, despite their small differences, produce very large differences in
outcomes, or, as Urry (2003: 22) puts it ‘there is no consistent relation-
ship between the cause and the effect of some event’. He goes on to argue
that ‘there is no necessary proportionality between “causes” and “effects”
of events and phenomena’ (2003: 24). In order words, just because a
causal variable or process has a small numerical value at the start of the
20 S. FARRALL
causal chain does not mean that it will have a small numerical impact.
However, this assumption is based on the (almost exclusively) quanti-
tative framework within which complexity theorists (and Byrne himself,
1998) locate their work. When one considers the concept of ‘smallness’ in
qualitative investigations, however, the concept of ‘small’ loses some of
its (already vague) definition. Because some projects which employ qual-
itative research designs and data, a better word might be ‘subtle’ rather
than ‘small’. Subtle implies discerning, discriminating or slight. As such
‘subtle’ does not invoke a quantitative assessment in the same way which
the word ‘small’ does.
Two examples (one of which is drawn from Byrne’s own book, and
the other a hypothetical criminological example) can be used to illustrate
these assertions. Byrne (1998: 38–39) cites the example of the causes of
tuberculosis. An eminent British physician (called Bradbury) was inter-
ested in what caused tuberculosis (TB) on Tyneside. The answer, as both
Bradbury and Byrne point out is (initially) very simple: the tuberculosis
bacteria causes TB. The problem, however, was that not everyone exposed
to the TB bacteria went on to develop TB. So it was not simply the
case that greater exposure to the bacteria which cause TB would result
in TB (which would have been the linear explanation). Bradbury’s inves-
tigations suggested that three factors were important in understanding
who developed TB and who did not. These were: poor housing, poor
diet, and being Irish. The first two of these are fairly easily understood:
the worse the conditions of one’s housing and the worse one’s diet, the
more likely one was to develop TB or to have the nutrients to fuel one’s
immune system and to fight off TB. This are classic linear relationships.
However, the third variable, being Irish, was less straightforward. Irish
migrants had, at that time, not been living on Tyneside for very long, and
had less experience than the rest of the Tyneside population of urbanisa-
tion (about two generations less). TB, like many other bacteria, breed for
resistance. Hence at that time Irish migrants were particularly susceptible
to developing TB as they had had less exposure to the TB bacteria and
the conditions in which it thrived. Thus the causal mechanisms for TB on
Tyneside during the 1930s were complex and contingent. Whilst the rela-
tionship between housing, diets and getting TB were linear, the degree
of the relationship between these varied. Being Irish made it more likely,
having two or more generations living in urban conditions suppressed the
relationship.
The second example (this time hypothetical) concerns sentencing in

criminal courts. Imagine a study designed to explain the sentences which
were imposed on all of those found guilty in a magistrates’ court. A
number of factors can be identified which might be of use in accounting
for variations in sentences: previous criminal history (chiefly previous
convictions and outcomes of previous disposals); the nature of the current
offence (intentions to harm and actual harm to victim, the efforts made
by the guilty party to repair the harm they caused, the tariff and so on);
the pre-sentence report and the recommendations made in it (do these
lean towards a custodial sentence or a community sentence?); the plea
entered (did they admit their guilt?); the characteristics of the guilty party
(demeanour, signs of distress, age, gender and so on); the public’s atti-
tude towards crimes of that nature at the time and probably several other
factors. In coming to their decision, magistrates may take into account any
number of these factors. Some will make custody more likely, others will
make probation seem appropriate and still others may make community
service or a suspended sentence appear to be a sensible disposal. However,
these processes are not simply linear; an admission of guilt and expression
of remorse coupled with a pre-sentence report favouring a community
disposal may help in avoiding prison. Nevertheless, and irrespective of the
above, the ethnicity of the defendant may be crucial in deciding whether
they got custody or not.
These two examples go some way in illustrating the sorts of issues
which social scientists routinely encounter. In both, there can be found
a conglomeration of factors which influence the outcomes. In the TB
example, these were housing conditions, diet and ethnicity (or to be
more precise, ethnicity in particular time and place). In the sentencing
example, these were hypothesised to be criminal history, offence, etc.
However, as shown in the TB example, these causes are non-additive.
Similarly, sentencing decisions can also be hypothesised to be non-
additive: unique factors, variations and contingencies may influence the
outcomes of sentencing decisions in various ways, some aggravating and
some mitigating. Despite this, the range of outcomes in both cases is
known with some degree of certainty: people either will or will not get
TB. The range of sentencing options can often be estimated both in terms
of the type of sentence (custodial or non-custodial) and the severity of the
sentence (length of custody or numbers of hours of community sentence,
for example).
22 S. FARRALL
Learning from Individual-Level Thinking:

An Institutional Developmental Criminology?
In his Introduction to an edited collection devoted to theories of
offending (mainly at the individual level of explanation), Thornberry
(1997: 1–10) outlined a number of advantages of developmental
approaches in criminology over non-developmental approaches. He
argued that developmental theories are able to identify and offer expla-
nations for important variations in rates of offending over the life-course.
As such, this perspective has helped to introduce a new vocabulary to
research on offending behaviours. Terms such as onset, escalation, persis-
tence, deceleration, specialisation, desistance are now all aspects of debates
and research into offending careers and topics about which more is now
known than was the case ten or twenty years ago. Furthermore, when the
developmental aspects of offending are taken into consideration, various
‘ideal types’ of offending trajectories emerge. Thornberry focused on
Moffitt’s work, which identified two key trajectories (although others
have been identified since, see Ezell & Cohen, 2005). The first type
Moffitt identified she referred to as persisters or early starters. These
people start their offending at a young age (pre-teens in some cases),
and continue to offend for long periods of their lives. The second type
starts their offending at an older age (often during adolescence) and
have usually ceased to offend by the time they have reached their mid
to late twenties (Moffitt, 1997). The observation that these two types
of offending careers differ has implications for both policy and theory.
In theoretical terms, it suggests that different explanations of onset of
engagement, persistence and desistance may be required for each of these
groups. In policy terms, it suggests that those who can be identified as
likely to have lengthy offending careers ahead of them may be candi-
dates for selective incapacitation (Farrington, 1992). However, there are
numerous ethical arguments against such a policy. The third way in which
developmental theories improve upon non-developmental explanations,
claims Thornberry, is that they have been more directly concerned with
the wider social, economic and cultural contexts of offending behaviour.
The roots of offending behaviours have been shown to be related to early
experiences, often in childhood, such as abuse, neglect or inconsistent
or ‘poor’ parenting. By understanding the role of these variables and
the processes associated with them (such as poor housing, poor parental
supervision, low family income), the ability to explain the onset and
persistence of offending is enhanced. Similarly, involvement in offending

is likely to have a profound effect upon the rest of an individual’s life,
indeed, writes Thornberry:
Serious and prolonged involvement in delinquent behaviour is likely to

adversely influence social relations with family and peers, belief systems,
and the success and timing of transitions to adult roles and the life course.
(1997: 4)
Finally, Thornberry argues that developmental theories of offending high-

light the role of particular events in shaping offending careers and their
trajectories over time. Engagement in offending has been observed to
alter as people’s lives undergo various transitions, such as changes in
marital status, employment status, place of residence and so on. Thus
a person’s engagement in offending behaviours can be described in part
by the trajectories along which their lives unfold and the occurrence (or
lack of, in some cases) of certain transitions which alter the course of their
trajectory.
What Thornberry’s arguments imply is that there are contingent
factors in processes which shape individuals’ lives and which go a long
way to explaining key aspects of their offending— such as whether or not
they start, when they start, how long they continue to offend for and
when and how they cease offending. The contingent factors are institu-
tions and organisations. Institutions are families, and organisations are
schools, employment, welfare systems and so on. So if these play a key
part in individuals’ offending careers at the individual level, might they
also work as explanators at the meso- and macro-levels? If we use some
of the ideas from Thornberry’s essay but stop thinking about individual
offending careers and start to thinking of both a nation’s crime career
(i.e. it’s crime rates over time) and also of the ways in which a country’s
social and economic policies and culture might shape the sorts of insti-
tutions which is supports and promotes, and which in turn might shape
the offending careers of the people who live in that society, then we are
starting to think along the lines which I think we ought to more readily
embrace. However, few have gone down this route.
Michael Benson (2002) is one author who has attempted to theorise
how social and economic change may alter environments in ways, which
might affect engagement in crime over the life-course. He also notes
that very few criminologists have explored the ways in which the State
24 S. FARRALL
can shape criminal careers (2002: 167–168). He goes on to argue that

States can shape offending careers via their policies relating to transporta-
tion systems, housing policies and economic decisions (2002: 181). In
exploring the concentration of poverty amongst the US’s Black popula-
tion, Benson points to Wilson’s work (1990) which shows how decisions
made by politicians, State officials and private individuals have helped
to leave the US’s Black population living with higher levels of family
disruption and residential instability than is the norm in the US (2002:
182). These processes took several decades to emerge, however, and
were underscored by changes in the economy, which saw a long period
of economic slowdown after 1974, during which many manufacturing
jobs were lost (2002: 183). Such jobs were key to ensuring informal
social control amongst lower-class males, since they offered a chance for
relatively highly paid employment without the need for high levels of
education. As jobs started to be shed, so inner-city areas started to decay
rapidly, and crime and worries about crime began to rise (2002: 184).
Benson theorised that these changes would have affected the lives of those
who lived in such communities.
Another criminologist who has theorised the ways in which social and
economic processes may shape individual-level offending is John Hagan.
Hagan (in the same collected a Thornberry’s essay, 1997) presents a
theory of crime-causation based on a detailed review of the changes in the
US economy since the end of WWII. He notes how economic restruc-
turing, coupled with rises in economic inequality, increasingly high rates
of residential segregation along with the concentration of poverty, have
pushed some US inner cities into a situation in which there are few mean-
ingful legal employment careers on which to build law-abiding lifestyles.
In place of these legitimate jobs, Hagan argues, some communities have
started to rely on illegal activities (drug sales, prostitution and other
‘deviant’ or ‘grey economy’ services, such as gambling, porn-brokers or
as places to fence stolen good) as a means for securing an income. Such
activities become entrenched as, over time, few people have links to legit-
imate employers and crime becomes embedded in communities’ daily
routines. Such activities therefore also start to shape the lives of the men
and women who live in these communities.
Summary
Complexity works along various dimensions, all of which need to be
worked into future analyses. Complexity can be found in terms of histor-
ical processes, whereby events, decisions and policies from several years,
even decades earlier can still exert an influence. Similarly, the geograph-
ical dimension of complexity can be seen in the ways in which different
communities may experience very different outcomes and fates even
though they are very close to one another. In addition, events and
processes far away can exert an influence on events in other parts of the
world—even if not immediately, several years later. We also see complexity
in terms of the ways in which processes are regulated with varying layers
of governance and regulation affecting many daily routines. In addition,
and as we shall see in later chapters, we can detect complexity in terms
of the ways in which different events affect people in the same commu-
nity or society differently because of their age, ethnicity or gender (for
example). In addition to these observations, the sorts of systems which
criminologists are interested in, such as criminal justice systems, but also
those relating to welfare, housing, the economy and schools, are dynamic,
in that they change over time. Hence a relationship, which exists at one
time may not exist at another because a system has changed in some
way—perhaps even as a result of an acknowledgement of the relation-
ship and a desire to change it in some way. Time, then, is at the heart
of studying complex systems, since it will take time for the outcomes to
be produced by that system. That does not mean that one needs to only
embark on longitudinal research designs, since in some cases the nature
of the complexity may lend itself to cross-sectional designs. Nevertheless,
building models, explanations and research projects which do enable for
the unpacking and exploring of temporal processes are probably going to
rely most heavily upon longitudinal research designs. There are, of course,
a number of such designs and we will encounter some of them during the
course of the following chapters.
Having described how complexity is embedded in temporal processes,
and shown that it can be understood to exist in many of the sorts of
processes which criminologists are interested in, the remaining chapters in
this book deal with different ways of exploring the topic both theoretically
and in terms of the approach taken to any data being analysed. In the next
chapter, we explore what has become known as historical institutionalism,
and which has seen greatest use amongst political scientists, historians
26 S. FARRALL
and political historians, and as such represents a useful ‘tool box’ for
exploring those processes in which organisations, institutions and ideas
are key to understanding outcome(s). Historical institutionalist thinking
is useful when explaining how the macro-level may shape outcomes at the
meso-level, but also holds some clues as to the role played by agents in
these processes.
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CHAPTER 3
Historical and Constructivist Institutionalisms
Abstract This chapter describes the body of work known as histor-

ical institutionalism, and outlines key concepts such as path-dependent
processes, feedback loops and punctuated equilibrium (amongst others).
It then outlines a further body of work (which developed partly as a
critique of historical institutionalism) which is known as constructivist
institutionalism, and which points to the ways in which ideas and the
construction of problems and policy concerns also play a part in complex
explanations. The chapter ends with a brief consideration of compara-
tive historical analyses. The ideas in this chapter are useful for studying
processes of change in which ideas play a role in the eventual outcomes
observed, and in which the changes affect organisations, institutions and
individuals, but in which past decisions and social forms still affect the
processes and outcomes.
Keywords Historical institutionalism · Constructivist institutionalism ·

Comparative
In the previous chapter, I made two key arguments. The first was that
when we study crime, victimisation and the criminal justice system, we
need to acknowledge that we are studying a complex system (as is

Switzerland AG 2021
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-74830-2_3
30 S. FARRALL
common with many branches of the social sciences). The second was
that the key thing which makes a system complex is not merely the pres-
ence of three or more interacting variables, but rather that this interaction
must have a temporal dimension to it. This means that as criminologists,
we need to develop a greater set of resources than we have currently in
order to unpack how these processes work and how best to think about
and study them. This chapter, and the ones which follow it, offer some
ideas of how we can do this using literatures from allied social sciences.
This chapter deals with three closely related bodies of literature, relating
to historical institutionalism, constructivist institutionalism (which grew
out of historical institutionalist assumptions) and comparative historical
analyses. Let us take them in order.
Historical Institutionalism
Historical Institutionalism is concerned with illuminating how institu-
tions and institutional settings mediate the ways in which processes unfold
over time (Thelen & Steinmo, 1992: 2). Peter Hall defines an institution
as:
… the formal rules, compliance procedures, and standard operating prac-

tices that structure the relationship between individuals in various units of
the polity and economy. (1986: 19)
For others, the focus of historical institutionalism is on the state, govern-

ment institutions and social norms (Ikenberry, 1988: 222–223). Sanders,
in keeping with the above, asserts that
If [historical institutionalism] teaches us anything, it is that the place to

look for answers to big questions … is in institutions, not personalities and
over the longer landscapes of history, not the here and now. (2006: 53)
Historical institutionalism, then, is an attempt to develop an under-

standing of how political and policy processes and relationships plays out
over time coupled with an appreciation that prior events, procedures and
processes will have consequences for subsequent events. Sanders writes
that
3 HISTORICAL AND CONSTRUCTIVIST INSTITUTIONALISMS 31
the central assumption of historical institutionalism is that it is more

enlightening to study human political interactions: a) in the context of
rule structures that are themselves human creations; and b) sequential, as
life is lived, rather than to take a snapshot of those interactions at only one
point in time, and in isolation from the rule structures that (institutions)
in which they occur. (2006: 39)
For Sanders, then, historical institutionalists are mainly interested in

how institutions are constructed, maintained and adapted over time
(2006: 42). Since the initial flurry of activity establishing the theoretical
and analytical and methodological distinctiveness of historical institu-
tionalism (and which took place in the late 1980s and early 1990s),
some have criticised historical institutionalists for focussing on the ‘insti-
tutionalist’ aspects of their research at the expense of the ‘historical’
dimensions (Pierson, 2004: 8). In a series of highly stimulating publi-
cations, Pierson has pushed historical institutionalism towards a greater
acceptance of not just the role of institutions in shaping society, but also
that played by particular individuals and groups of individuals (Pierson,
1996, 2000, 2004). Thelen (1999: 375) argues that historical institution-
alists’ approach is premised on the idea that institutions do more than just
channel policy and structure political and policy conflict and formulation,
rather they define the interests and create the objects of the policies them-
selves. As such, who articulates which interests, how and under which
circumstances is a consequence not just of political desires and imper-
atives, but is itself a consequence of the sorts of institutions which are
created and the contexts which they give rise to. Time (and the taking of
time seriously) is clearly a central variable in the work of historical institu-
tionalists. As one of the leading proponents of historical institutionalism
argues, ‘many of the implications of political decisions … only play out in
the long term’ (Pierson, 2004: 41). Historical institutionalism is key for
us due to its focus on politics and policy outcomes over the longue duree.
Let us now explore in a little more detail the building blocks of historical
institutionalism.
Key Concepts in Historical Institutionalism

I am going to focus on seven key concepts within historical institution-
alism. These are:
32 S. FARRALL
• path dependencies,
• positive feedback Loops,
• the timing and sequence of events and processes,
• the role of ‘slow-moving’ causal processes and ‘slow-moving’
outcomes,
• the relationship between historical institutionalism and the assump-
tions of theories of human agency (including rational choice),
• the role of critical junctures and
• the concept of punctuated equilibrium.
Again, let us take each in turn.
Path Dependencies
Various definitions of this term exist. For Sewell (1996: 232–233) the
term implies that ‘what happened at an earlier point in time will affect
the possible outcomes of a sequence of events occurring at a later point
in time’. Levi provides a rather longer (and more thorough) definition
which is worth quoting at length:
Path dependence has to mean… that once a country has started down a
track, the costs, of reversal are very high. There will be other choice points,
but the entrenchments of certain institutional arrangements obstruct an
easy reversal of the initial choice, perhaps the better metaphor is a tree,
rather than a path. From the same trunk, there are many different branches
and smaller branches. Although it is possible to turn around or to clamber
from one to the other – and essential if the chosen branch dies – the
branch on which a climber begins is the one she tends to follow. (1997:
28)
This, indeed, is the definition of historical institutionalism used by Pierson

(2004: 20), who adds that path dependence refers to a dynamic process,
which involves a positive feedback and which generates a series of further
outcomes depending on the sequence in which these events and processes
occur (See also Stinchcombe, 1968: 103–118 on ‘historical causes’).
As such, once a path has been embarked upon, decisions, events and
processes tend to reinforce this path, making the change to an alternative
path harder with each step. Over time the paths not taken become harder
and harder to navigate back towards and the chosen path becomes more
3 HISTORICAL AND CONSTRUCTIVIST INSTITUTIONALISMS 33
dominant. The order in which specific decisions are taken, and processes
and events unfold will also shape the sorts of subsequent adaptions to the
path taken. This approach has tended to make historical institutionalism
rather conservative, in that it focuses on how paths are maintained, rather
than changed.1
However, as Thelen rightly notes, even the ‘losers’ (those who wanted
a different path to be adopted, or a different sets of institutions to be
created or developed) in a path-dependent system do not somehow ‘dis-
appear’ (1999, see also Green, 1999: 23 on the liberal-market position
within the Conservative Party during the period from 1945 to 1951).
Those same actors and interest groups still exist (if in a less powerful or
less influential state of being) and as such, can adapt their own stated
policies or actual procedures to any emerging configuration of institu-
tions. Such adaption(s) may mean waiting for more opportune moments
to arise and/or assist in the reproduction of path dependencies as the
‘losers’ move to either embrace or reject any emerging set of institu-
tions. Even the rejection of a position in some ways provides it with
legitimacy, since to reject is at some level to recognise it in some way
(even only temporarily). Naturally, as Bulmer cautions us, the idea of
path dependency does not mean that all policy areas will be affected (or,
by extension, affected at the same time or in the same ways, Bulmer,
2009: 310). Similarly, whilst a particular historical moment may create
a critical juncture (on which see below) for one institution, it does not
mean that all institutions will be similarly effected (Capoccia & Kelemen,
2007: 349). Even though an entire political system may face periods
of widespread change, some institutions will remain surprisingly unaf-
fected. Similarly, an unrecognised problem with the approach adopted
by historical institutionalism is the consideration that a path dependency
may become cumulatively destabilising over time. That is to say that
continuing along a path may initially produce beneficial outcomes, but
these may reach a critical threshold at which the benefits start to become
outweighed by the negatives or lead to dramatic change (an analogy
might be blowing air into a deflated balloon; this inflates the balloon, but
1 In this respect, historical institutionalism has exhibited a similar problem to some

theories of the middle range (such as Giddens’ structuration theory, 1984) in that it
tends to be able to explain reproduction of existing forms of institutions, but finds it
harder to account for changes to institutions (see Johnson, 1990). Solutions to this issue
is dealt with below and in Chapter 6 when discussing theories of structuration.
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baffled in every wild effort to save, at the gradual ruin and degradation of
any she loved; that barren and bitter sorrow at least was spared her.
But what if she, whose pain had been so fruitful to man, could hear, and
from her place of peace give balm to crushed and broken hearts? Human
sympathy may not be confined to this brief passage through time and space,
she mused.
The path led with a sudden turn through garden ground, unfenced, then
past a pink house with a pergola, and ended at an abrupt fall of narrow vine
terraces down the ravine. Thence was seen a fuller, broader prospect facing
south, bounded by a sea of purple and gold shot with crimson. There she
turned, and climbing a broad flight of steps leading to the low-walled
summit of the ridge, became aware of a large wooden cross standing against
the pure sky on the top, as if with open arms of welcome.
Above and around it were quivering spires of cypress and plumy tops of
eucalyptus, and, between black cypress boughs, the white gleam of convent
walls.
The weight of silent, secret grief grew to a physical burden on those

weary steps; her heart sank and died when she reached the top, and stood in
rich sunshine at the foot of the great bare cross, its arms uplifted in witness
and welcome for many and many a mile round, and listlessly spelt out the
words cut round the centre:
Ave, crux, spes unica!
Then something gave way in her aching breast, the four healing words
echoed and found response in her heart.
"Ave, ave!" she faltered, her slender figure bowed in the golden light,
the healing scent of eucalyptus blossom floating down to her, and the
majesty of those soaring mountain peaks and buttressed hill-flanks
spreading far above in the hush and glow of the passing day. There, with
her face pressed to the sun-warmed wood and her arms clasping it, a huge
weight—"the burden and the mystery of all this unintelligible world"—fell
away from her heart, and the great prayer that has no words filled it with
peace beyond understanding—the spes unica—the only road to solution of
all the tangled mystery of life.
When she rose the world was changed. On either side of the cross stood
a tall eucalyptus tree; long tresses of pale fragrant blossom hung among
their scimitar-shaped leaves; their cinnamon-coloured trunks, whence rolls
of scented bark peeled, were so forked that the branched stems made a
comfortable seat; there the tired girl rested in the ruddy glow, silently
absorbing the same tranquil pageant of vesper splendour that light-hearted
Ermengarde was watching from the hotel garden above. Sea murmurs were
faintly audible in the deep stillness, the incense curling bluely from hill-
altars was sweet, glorious were the grandly-grouped peaks and mountain
masses changing and glowing with life-like motion in the sliding lights,
silent, majestic witnesses to the everlasting beauty that underlies and
transfuses all things. God was speaking through all that beauty; doubt and
fear vanished; in spite of misery, care, and sin, all must be well at last.
Lightened at heart, she leant on the low convent wall and looked down
the ravine, that was rapidly filling with shadow, and across it at the white
village poised on a hill, its slender tower uplifted like a standard under the
purple-shadowed mountain peak.
Suddenly a harsh high laugh broke upon the charmed stillness, and was
followed by strident voices and a confused hurry of footsteps, as the whole
rout of pleasure-seekers from the hotel gate clattered round the corner under
the convent walls unseen, while a polyglot cackle, playing round the words
systems, hotels, Monte, tables, winnings, losings, dinners, poured out in
passing crescendo and died gradually away in the distance.
But before they were quite out of hearing, as they filed out upon a part
of the path visible from the convent wall, the young woman's gaze was
startled and arrested by the same lady and attendant youths whose talk had
already been overheard from the hotel gardens, and her heart stood still and
her colour went at the sight.
These two? Was it these two really beyond doubt? Then what she had
heard and what had been feared was true, much too true. And for such as
they, of what avail to wrestle, to agonize, to beat at the gate of heavenly
mercy with fastings and tears and inward silent heart-bleeding? Even now
the boy's mother must be praying at home for him. And of what avail? Yet
was not yonder vast cathedral reared to the lucid sky telling in superb and
solemn beauty of the infinite power and love and pity of the divine poet and
artificer of all? And even if that calm majesty had no power to rebuke
fretting or silence despair, there was the spes unica shining in the deepening
after-glow, a beacon to storm-driven hearts.
A little withered old woman passed along under the rock wall, leading a
self-willed goat, and briskly knitting. She sent up a shrill and cheerful
"Buon sera," laughed, and nodded, and went on her tranquil way. Then the
lay brother in charge of the deserted garden, passing the eucalyptus on his
way home from work, told her she had taken the longest way, and put her
on the shorter, and she went down the steps as the first few stars trembled
into the sky, and so round through olives and pines to the hotel. And there,
in the glowing twilight above the lemon-tops, was the face of her fellow-
traveller, brightening at the sight of her with smiles of welcome.
"My dear woman of mystery, where did you spring from?" she cried. "I
thought you had gone on to Italy. And how on earth did you climb up this
terrific hill? And where is your luggage? And how very glad I am to see you
again!"
That Italy was just round the corner, that the parting had been but
yesterday, and that it was possible for an able-bodied woman to climb a
mile of mountain-path without utter destruction, filled Ermengarde with a
wonder only less than her wonder at her own unfeigned delight in
unexpectedly meeting this woman, who appeared to be somewhat
overpowered by her effusive reception.
"Dear Mrs. Allonby," she protested faintly, while being carried off to the
house, "indeed, I am not at all hungry, and not so very tired."
"Oh, but you are!" she insisted. "Dreadfully tired. And you must have
some tea at once—in my room. I had mine long ago, out of doors. I will
make tea for you in my own Etna—the one that upset in my dress-basket.
Are you expected? Have you engaged rooms? Let me take you in to
Madame Bontemps, proprietress and manager. Most civil and obliging; will
make you very comfortable. We shall find her in the office. Heinrich?
What's become of the porter? Madame Bontemps? What on earth's the
matter?"
The inner door, which had been closed at sunset, yielded to pressure,
and let a torrent of strident voices and sounds of discord pour out upon the
startled air, disclosing a spectacle that caused both ladies to retreat in
momentary terror, and despair of all peaceful and safe passage through the
hall.
Madame Bontemps had, as it were, taken the stage—that is, the middle
of the hall—and with blazing eyes and murderous gestures, was calling
down what sounded the most terrific maledictions upon the devoted head of
the stalwart Swiss porter, Heinrich, who, with bristling moustache and hair
and balled fists, thundered back denunciations even more terrific with
gestures of even greater violence.
"And not a policeman to be had!" Ermengarde lamented. "What on

earth is to be done? She will be killed, and so will he. Heinrich! Madame!
Monsieur Bontemps! Feu—au secours!" she cried, heedless of the new
arrival's suggestion to wait till the storm was over. But of this there
appeared to be little chance. Madame Bontemps, her features distorted with
fury, shrieked fiercer and fiercer maledictions at the retreating Heinrich,
springing across the hall at him, when he fled from her onset, soon to return
to the charge, before which she in her turn retreated, with denunciations and
gestures that put Madame Bontemps' life at a pin's fee.
"If there was only a fire-bell," murmured Ermengarde, looking round,

deaf to her companion's reassurance that the contest would be bloodless, "or
a police-whistle, or even a cab-stand!"
But Madame, undismayed and active, her rolled back hair quivering, her
tall form dilating, her hands on her hips, repulsed the charge of Heinrich
with such a torrent of abuse as drove him back once more to the middle of
the hall. There both stood, still shouting and misunderstanding each other in
three languages for a measurable space, during which Monsieur Bontemps
lounged in an easy attitude, cigarette in mouth, at the office door, softly
stroking his beard, and contemplating the engagement with indifference,
tinged with approval and admiration of the majesty and fury of Madame.
"It is just this," he explained, with gentle condescension, when the storm
lulled, "the French of Madame is incomplete; she supplements it with the
Italian of the country—a tongue entirely unknown to Heinrich. The French
of Heinrich, on the contrary, is absolutely vile. He supplements it with
German, of which both he and Madame are partly ignorant, and with Swiss-
German, a tongue known to none but those mountaineers. Hence
misunderstandings. Myself, I ignore all. Que voulez-vous?"
Yielding to pressure, however, he at length drew the infuriated lady's

attention from the combat to the claims of her guests. In a moment her
looks of fury were replaced by smiles of courteous welcome; her blazing
eyes shed light of soft inquiry, and she came forward with a stately bow and
a genial, "Bon soir, mesdames," while Heinrich as quickly forgot his
wrongs and his wrath, and, dissolving into cheerful smiles, took his usual
station by the door. Finally, the tumult being succeeded by perfect calm, he
blandly picked up a few of the woman of mystery's parcels, which had
arrived beforehand, and carried them to her room, whither they were
preceded by the stately presence of Madame Bontemps herself.
The new arrival never forgot the tea brewed for her that evening. To that
she attributed every digestive disturbance that afflicted her all her life after.
Nor did Ermengarde lightly dismiss from memory her own joy and
fatigue in making that tea with her own hands, and for the first time, over a
complicated and expensive new patent spirit-lamp, expressly devised to boil
a minimum of water with a maximum of peril, inconvenience, and delay. A
serious initial difficulty in lighting the lamp was presently overcome by the
discovery that there was no spirit in it. A little of this, after some
deliberation and delay, was borrowed of Miss Boundrish's mother. "But on
no account tell Dorris," the latter implored; "she don't like lending things."
The second difficulty of the kettle not boiling was surmounted after finding
that it had no water—a circumstance which nearly resulted in burning a
hole in it—by ringing the bell not more than five times for water of
unimpeachable purity. The kettle at last having been filled, boiled over
during a long and futile search for the tea, several parcels of which had been
artfully mislaid in improbable portions of wearing apparel with the guileful
purpose of evading douaniers and defrauding the French Republic of
revenue. At last the brilliant idea of following up the trail of those packets,
that had burst and peppered priceless raiment with black dust and broken
stalks, resulted in their discovery. No matter how widely friends at home
had differed in their advice to those about to travel, all had agreed that as
much tea as the regulations by utmost stretching permitted, besides as much
again as that, must be carried in every separate parcel and trunk, with the
result that Ermengarde, finding little use during her travels for the tea upon
which she had squandered so much substance, and incidentally making all
her things smell like a grocer's shop, furtively shed small packets of it all
across the Continent on her return home, in vague terror of incurring
mysterious pains and penalties by secreting so much contraband.
"Is it refreshing?" she asked, when at last, flushed with triumph and
heat, and smudged with lamp-black, besides having burnt her hand in a
spirit-flare, she handed the precious beverage in an enamelled tin mug
without a saucer. She would not have had a saucer for the world; it would
have spoilt the whole thing.
"It's—very—hot," gasped the recipient, with watering eyes and a look

of deep anguish.
"It's a very special tea," Ermengarde said impressively, watching the

sufferer's agonies with complacence.
"Very special," sighed the victim; "most special."
"I got it myself, from a woman whose cousin married a tea-planter. He

sends her a chest every now and then to sell to intimate friends to pay for
Church work," Ermengarde continued, with intense satisfaction. "That
accounts for the remarkable flavour."
"No doubt it does," murmured the sufferer, recovering breath, and

correctly attributing the mingled taste of old boots and public-houses, that
characterized the special tea, to the probability of the kettle having had no
lid on and a strong spirit flare under it.
"Poor dear; you must have been dying for a cup!" her tormentor
murmured, with relentless benignity.
"From a cup," the victim thought; but by degrees she gallantly

swallowed the whole dose, finding it impossible to evade the pleased and
compassionate eyes bent so persistently upon her.
"How odd that we should have been coming to the very same house all
the time!" Ermengarde said, wearily drawing a lamp-blacked hand across
her still aching forehead, and sinking upon the nearest seat, when the tea-
drinking was over.
"Ah, yes," with a little hesitation.
"And chance upon rooms adjoining, too!"
"Very odd."
"How glad I am it's you, and not that dreadful Anarchist, Miss—ah
——"
"My name is Somers—Agatha Somers," she said quickly, with a flush,

not unnoticed.
"Only think, if the wretch were to come back? Do you think he will?"
suddenly, with a keen look.
"How can I possibly guess?" she replied, with the stone blank
expression noticed in the train.
"Strange that he should have come up here for a single night, instead of
going to one of the hotels in the town."
"Did he? Perhaps he thought this dull. It is a little—secluded."
"If ever I saw guilt written on a human face," thought Ermengarde, her
suspicions all awake again, in a moment of sudden repulsion. "Well," she
added, rising to go, "au revoir till dinner. But I must give you one piece of
advice, Miss Somers," she added, turning back and sitting on the edge of
the bed, her eye chancing to fall on an open letter that had slipped from a
hand-bag on the bed—a strange letter, written in what was no doubt cipher,
all dots and dashes and lines and bars, with little explosions here and there.
"Don't say anything not meant to meet the ear of the public on the path
outside the straw shelter. I'll tell you what I heard this afternoon. As you
can't possibly know the people, it can't matter; it is not tale-telling. And I
dare say that poor boy has a mother," she sighed, at the close of her tale,
"who little knows what harpies are preying upon him. By the way," she
added, "do you remember seeing a tall, cheery-looking English lad at
Monte Carlo Station yesterday? It was that very boy."
The woman of mystery, in the act of raising the lid of a trunk before
which she was kneeling, let it fall with a crash that drew a faint sudden
sound of pain from her.
"It was the lock," she faltered, rising to her feet, and leaning against the
tall French window frame, rather pale and holding her hand. "Oh, not really
hurt; it only smarts for the moment. But what were you saying? I beg
pardon. You recognized a friend at Monte Carlo Station yesterday? How
observant you are, dear Mrs. Allonby! And one English boy is so like
another."
"But this one has such a happy laugh, so infectious, so jolly, so devil-
may-care. And that painted foreign thing was such a cat. She'd got her
claws so deep in him. Such a Countess as poor Yvette's mother, I should say
—a Countess in her own—wrong. I suspect there are tons of that sort at
Monte Carlo."
"No doubt," Agatha returned, absently looking out of the window at the
lights lying along the torrent-bed like a thin river of light, broadening into
an estuary where the roofs of the town were crowded together by the
darkened sea. "I think I will take your advice, dear Mrs. Allonby, and lie
down till dinner. I'm more tired than I thought."
Chapter VIII
The Carnival
That Dorris Boundrish was an exceedingly pretty girl her severest

critics could not deny, nor could her greatest admirers refrain from a
suspicion that she was scarcely as irresistible or as brilliant as she imagined.
Her mouth was like pink coral, small and sweet, but with hints of
peevishness and discontent in the corners; her face had wild-rose tints; her
eyes were clear, speedwell blue, but a little hard at times; something on her
velvety forehead said, "Not much in here." Of that deficiency poor Miss
Dorris was wholly unaware; on the contrary, she supposed the premises to
be unusually spacious and well-stocked, and in this persuasion was
benignantly given to impart her superfluous knowledge to an ungrateful
world to an extent that sometimes made people thankful to be spared such
information as that sea-water is too strong of salt to make a pleasant drink,
or that two and two amount together to the round number of four.
All evils have their compensations; and this amiable weakness of Miss
Dorris sometimes became a source of joy to the community of Les Oliviers,
when properly manipulated by M. Isidore, for example. For it was the
especial delight of this fair young creature to impart recently acquired
knowledge to her neighbours, and recently acquired knowledge being
undigested, and in many cases hastily and inaccurately received, sometimes
emerges from its temporary lodging in the brain in a changed, even
unrecognizable, form. Moreover, M. Isidore, having an imagination of
unusual fertility and an impish delight in mischief, was tempted to confide
myths having only a poetic and ideal foundation in fact, to the ear of Dorris,
in the sure anticipation of hearing them issue in some novel form from the
pink coral lips at table d'hôte; always providing he listened, as he frequently
did, unseen behind an open door, to the general buzz of table talk, above
which Miss Boundrish's arrogant treble shrilled high and incessant. When
the intelligence conveyed by the pink coral lips was very wildly
improbable, that every conscript, for example, during his first month of
service, was dieted entirely on frogs to inspire him with martial courage, the
thin man, usually silent, would, very gently expressing astonishment,
venture to ask the source of Miss Boundrish's information.
"Oh, it's perfectly true, Mr. Welbourne," the overbearing treble would
scream down the table, "I had it from a man who had been in the French
army himself. The frogs are those little green things in the tanks, that are
beginning to make such a croaking every night. Of course, you know that
Mont Agel is terrain militaire, where nobody is allowed to go for fear of
disturbing these frogs, which are kept in tanks on purpose. The diet is so
stimulating, you know, it makes the soldiers long to fight."
"Really?" the thin man would murmur pensively. "How very

interesting! What a remarkably ingenious people the French are! Would
such an idea ever occur to the dull British brain, do you suppose?"
Then a smile would go round the table, and coughs and suppressed
chokings would be heard, and M. Isidore would dance with rapture in the
corridor outside, and, on being severely interrogated by Ermengarde and the
thin man afterwards, would truthfully say that he only asked Mademoiselle
if she had heard of this curious custom of dieting on frogs for courage, and
with regard to Mont Agel had chanced to mention that the public were
excluded from that, as from all terrain militaire, and that many tanks
containing frogs were there, as everywhere in the hills.
"The imagination of Mademoiselle," he would observe innocently,

"invests things with a magic of its own. In short, she is a poet." Then he
would laugh gently, and Ermengarde would shudder for his future, though
she was not above suggesting to him themes similar to the results of a frog
diet for Miss Boundrish's imagination to develop. So that table d'hôte was
sometimes the scene of some remarkable additions to human knowledge.
To account for her various and invincible charms, speculation as to

where Miss Boundrish had been dragged up was frequent and diverse. Yet
her parents were there in attendance upon her, harmless, worthy people of
the comfortable, Philistine, mid-middle class, the father rather deaf—he had
registered her with two r's, because her mother insisted on the short o in
Doris, and the man was too logical to leave his child with insufficient letters
—the mother placidly content with the wildest utterances of her only child,
and both well trained in the ways in which modern parents are expected to
go. That no subject was too abstruse for Dorris's discussion, and that
nothing could be spoken of upon which she was not quite as well informed
as anyone present, or better, caused them no apparent surprise. But Miss
Boundrish's father was a little deaf, and Miss Boundrish's mother once
confided to the thin man that it was a little tiring to be the mother of an
exceptionally gifted and accomplished child, and that a few days' visit to
Nice, contemplated by Dorris, would afford her a welcome opportunity of
taking a "much-needed" rest. "I should like," she sighed, "to have two solid
days to do nothing in and to think nothing in—and," she added, after a
pause, "to fear nothing in."
"So that one hopes the fair Dorris doesn't beat her," the thin man
commented to Ermengarde, who thought her quite capable of it. But Agatha
suggested that even Miss Boundrish's mother might not be quite insensible
to the fury some of her little ways evoked from the community; that pretty
little way of drawing up a chair or of walking up and stopping dead for the
express purpose of breaking into intimate or interesting dialogue, that even
prettier way of pursuing people bent on solitude, dual or otherwise, to
pleasant points of view, and pouring out entirely familiar, guide-book
information.
As, for instance, when the setting sun brought the craggy peaks that
wall the high hill-village of St. Agnes into unusual beauty, and a party
coming home from an excursion and another drawn out to the mountain
from the hotel, stood silently enjoying it, and Dorris's high voice suddenly
rang over the gorge with the history of the walled hill-villages, of the
abduction of the innocent young Agnes by Saracens in one of their raids,
and of the miracle wrought by her faith, which resulted in the conversion of
many, the restoration of St. Agnes to her home among the crags, and a
yearly commemoration of the event to this day by a procession of villagers.
"Why," murmured the thin man on that occasion, "why are there no
Saracens to-day?"
"There are plenty, Mr. Welbourne," cried the shrill voice unexpectedly.
"I saw some Moors in the town yesterday. They're all the same, you know."
"But they don't——" the thin man paused, allowing a daring word to die
on his lips. "That is—the great days of old—the days of daring and romance
—are over. We live in a degenerate age."
He spoke so mournfully that Miss Boundrish was much moved, and

joined him in lamentation over the past, while every heart present echoed
his unspoken thought, that a Saracen raid upon the Riviera might involve
the abduction of Miss Boundrish, the mere idea of which filled them with
joy. They were sure that she would have pleased the Saracenic taste, and
doubted if her prayers would work a miracle.
"Where on earth did you pick up that Somers girl, Mrs. Allonby?" the
sweet girl asked one day with pleasing directness and candour. It was
during a descent upon the town to see the Carnival, arranged between the
thin man, Ermengarde, and Agatha. Miss Boundrish, overhearing this
arrangement the night before—she always overheard everything—had
offered to make a fourth in the party, so suddenly, so loudly, and with such a
certainty of conferring a favour, and also so immediately in the hearing of
her mother, that neither of the three was ready with a civil excuse for
declining the honour, though each said sadly to the others afterwards, "Why
are there no Saracens now?"
"That Somers girl," Ermengarde repeated slowly and thoughtfully, as if

wondering to whom she referred.
"I don't think much of her," continued Dorris. "You know you can't be
too particular who you get to know in places like this. Very queer people in
these cheap Continental pensions."
"How true!" Ermengarde murmured thoughtfully. "I've never seen a

Carnival, have you?"
"You ought to see the Nice Carnival; this is a very one-horse thing. Did
you know Miss Somers in England?"
"Did you?"
"Not exactly, but I knew of her. That is, I knew the man she was
supposed to be engaged to. I—I knew him rather well, in fact." Miss
Boundrish's smile suggested worlds.
"Were you engaged to him, as well?"
"Well—not exactly engaged. Poor Ivor!" with the usual gurgle. "Such
an escape for him."—So Ermengarde thought.—"They say his people knew
nothing about it. So you picked her up abroad?"
"She—if you mean Miss Somers—picked me up once, on the floor of a

corridor carriage. Not pleasant to tumble down in a faint on the floor of a
train. One is thankful to be picked up and taken care of——"
"By anybody, of course," with the gurgle so familiar at Les Oliviers.

"Well, you'd better be on your guard, that's all. Did you lose any money,
anything of value on the way?"
"Miss Boundrish, what are you talking about?" was the sharp rejoinder.
"Only that, going about in the world, I get to know a lot of things. There
are so many sharpers about on the Continent—gangs of them in league
together. They follow people to Nice and Monte Carlo, and all these places,
and rook them in all sorts of ways. They are regular birds of prey, living by
their wits. Some think the police are in their pay. Robbery after robbery
takes place in trains and custom-houses; at least, jewels, money, and letters
of credit disappear from locked and registered luggage, and the thieves are
scarcely ever found out. I say, where do you think she spent the afternoon
of the day she came to Les Oliviers?—Ah! here they are," as Miss Somers
and the thin man came in sight of the waiting-place in the Jardins Publics.
"Poor Mr. Welbourne, he's quite gone on her already. She can't leave him
alone a minute."
"Four seats on the stand, but not together," said the thin man,
unconscious of personal comment. "How shall we divide?"
Although Ermengarde had by this time made some progress in the art of
sticking on to a perpendicular donkey acting as an intermittent see-saw,
somebody having given her some lessons on the most gentle-paced beast to
be found, she was not enamoured of that form of gymnastic, and of two
evils had thought a descent by a shorter path through gardens and woods on
foot with Miss Boundrish, the less, leaving Miss Somers to ride down the
longer mule-path with the thin man, whose slight lameness made him a
poor pedestrian. But her feeling of relief when the other two came up
brought her to the conclusion that even donkeys were preferable to Dorris.
Yet the hints from the pink coral lips were not without effect upon her,
chiming as they did with her own inferences, and she was dying to know
where Agatha had spent the afternoon of that first day, which Dorris had
also passed away from the hotel.
The party being now complete, they left the gardens and wound through
the holiday streets in the sunshine, now jostled by a cheerful and
apologizing devil, black from head to heel, with bat-wings of black crape
stretched on cane; now mixed up in a flock of geese with human legs and
monstrous cackling beaks; now avoiding the attentions of dominos flinging
paper serpents and trying to draw them into impromptu dances whenever a
band was heard along the street.
How gay and odd and foolish and delightful it was to unsophisticated
Ermengarde! The narrow, foreign streets, palms closing their vistas, great
hotels, in gardens glowing with gorgeous exotics and flowers, breaking
their lines here and there; the warm deep purple of the sea barring every
side street on one hand; the picturesque old Italian town climbing the
wooded hill-spur and cresting it with its tower on the other; and the great
mountain amphitheatre stretching far up beyond that, with bare peaks,
violet-veined, crystalline, drawn clear and sharp on the deep, clear, velvety
sky; the motley crowd of mad masks and dominos, cheaply gaudy,
childishly absurd, helplessly gay; the rippling laughter and confused babble
of local dialect and foreign tongues on the liquid air; the droll family
parties, transparently disguised, even the babies, in coloured calico; the trim
little mountain soldiers, bright-eyed and smiling, keeping the streets; the
hawkers of toys, sacks of confetti, and endless paper coils; the vendors of
strange local pastry and sweets on little standings; the look of expectant
enjoyment on every face, especially the broad and business-like bourgeois
countenance; the atmosphere of spontaneous gaiety, sunshine, and
enjoyment, all went to English Ermengarde's head. Old life-long artificial
restraints gave way; the joy of life sprang up; she could almost have taken
hands and danced with the maskers dancing along the street. The eternal
child, dormant in us all, was awake and happy in her.
It was not the show, that was poor and disappointing, all its cheap and
tawdry vanities blotting the pure beauty of atmosphere and setting, that
gave this new vivid sense of unconstrained gladness. Perhaps she had never
seen people madly, spontaneously, and yet decorously gay before. The
Carnival folk were all, young and old, rich and poor, merry and not wise
and bent upon being merry and not wise, and yet they were not in the least
ashamed or conscious of any cause for shame. Even some Americans, a
people never young but aged and biases from their cradles, snatched a brief
hour of long-deferred childhood, and a few self-conscious Britons, their
gloomy national pride concealed in dominos, condescended to diversions
that in their own personality they scorned as only fit for foreigners and
fools. No wonder that the sparkling sunny sea-air and atmosphere of
infectious enjoyment dissipated light-hearted Ermengarde's insular self-
consciousness, and she suddenly discovered that there is more enjoyment in
life than is commonly supposed.
What was the mad tune band after band kept playing as the huge cars,
grotesquely laden, filed slowly past; it was jingly and poor, but so crazily
full of headlong mirth—La Mattschiche? Long afterwards it gave her a
pleasant thrill to hear it shouted by street boys, thumped on pianos and
street organs, and blared on brass bands. It was "full of the warm South" for
her.
Mr. Welbourne, an artist and no Philistine, though a true-born

Englishman, public-school-milled, politely and unobtrusively bored, was
agreeably surprised by his countrywoman's interest in the show; it was like
taking a child—a real old-fashioned child—to a pantomime. Even Agatha
observed her with grave but pleased surprise. Dorris, when not explaining
things in a loud voice, expressed unmitigated contempt for everything; yet
Ermengarde, though she longed for Saracenic invasions when the gurgle
was too persistent, scarcely knew that Miss Boundrish was sitting beside
her on the stand erected in front of the Mairie, the thin man and Agatha
being in the row behind them. Mr. Welbourne, though simple and honest in
his ways, had sufficient guile to contrive that.
The stout elderly bourgeoise with a bad cold and strong scent of garlic,
sitting next Ermengarde, had come, she told her, from Monte Carlo, under
sad anxiety lest the bad cold should keep her at home, and never stopped
showering confetti on everybody that passed, always missing them, yet
wrought to ecstasy when confetti were thrown to her, and pleased as a child
when her paper serpents caught in the snapping jaws of the crocodile on a
car full of these creatures of all sizes.
Another very dowdy old dame in front was quite as active; she was as
thickly snowed over with confetti and wound about with paper serpents as
Lot's wife in her salt.
"I say, Mrs. Allonby," Dorris suddenly hissed in her ear, "look behind,
quick!" And Ermengarde, obeying at once, saw nothing but the woman of
mystery, unwinding a paper serpent coiled round her neck by a man with a
huge false nose in a smart carriage full of silk dominos.
"The sting is in the tail," murmured Dorris, and Ermengarde became

aware of a small packet at the end of the coil, that Agatha hastily glanced at
and slid into her hand-bag, her cheek flushing when she looked up and
caught eyes upon her.
Ermengarde sighed madly for Saracens. "How could you?" she

reproached Dorris, who became mysterious and full of dark hints.
Then a serpent was coiled round Mrs. Allonby's neck, and looking up at
the thrower, she recognized a Spanish cavalier on a mule, who had already
thrown her confetti and bouquets several times in passing the Mairie. She
had scattered most of the flowers on the crowd, but kept some especially
sweet tea-roses, also a bunch of Parma violets, thrown from the car that
carried a few family parties of crocodiles, opening and shutting their long
jaws, to the great delight of the populace.
There was something in the Spaniard, a flash of the eyes under the
broad sombrero, that made her heart beat. Where and when could she have
seen that whiskered face? He threw both serpents and confetti freely as he
passed, but no flowers, except to her. Very few flowers were thrown by
anyone.
When the serpent was unwound, there was a little weight at the end of
the coil. A letter? A bomb? Perhaps only chocolate. This was thrilling and
mysterious, but entirely delightful—a thing that could not possibly happen
at home—at least, not with propriety. The weight turned out to be a
morocco box wrapped in tissue paper. The man had evidently taken her for
somebody else—a respectable somebody else, it was to be hoped; she had
dropped into the middle of some romantic entanglement, or some dreadful
Anarchist or Nihilist plot. Heavens! it might have been meant for her
mysterious fellow-traveller, and contain a signal for the instant
assassination of some distinguished statesman or royal person recognized
through his disguise, or for the blowing up of the whole place. The spring
tentatively and gingerly touched, the lid flew up, but—though she shut her
eyes for quite two seconds—nothing whatever happened, nothing went off,
nobody was killed; there was neither explosive nor written instruction
inside—nothing but a thin gold chain, its delicate links separated at every
inch by pearls or diamonds, daintily coiled on the violet velvet lining.
Could it be poisoned, or charged with accumulated electricity to a deadly
extent? A dainty toy it looked; she had seen and longed for one just like it at
Spink's, not long ago. "Well, when the money-ship comes home," Arthur
had growled; and that, of course, meant never.
"Just look," she cried, holding it up in the sunshine. "I had no idea
people threw things like this to strangers."
"They don't," Dorris said grimly. "It was carefully aimed."
"Then it can't be for me," she mused, and turned back to Agatha, who
was reading the folded paper flung in the end of her coil, her hand shielding
her face from the sun, which struck full upon her. Just then such volleys of
confetti came broadside from a high car representing a ship that nothing but
defence could be thought of, and the chain was slipped into a purse and
forgotten. And when Ermengarde turned again to Agatha, she saw her, to
her unspeakable amazement, bending over the side of the stand, speaking to
the Spaniard—now dismounted and stopping on his way through a lane at
the corner of the stand.
This incident had not escaped Miss Boundrish, who smiled acidly at
Ermengarde's look of surprise. "Now we can guess the true destination of
the chain," she whispered.
But the sudden spectacle of the thin man across the road biding the
pelting of a pitiless storm of confetti from three several silken dominos at
once, with bent head and a face of resigned anguish, was so joyous that
Ermengarde forgot her momentary desire to murder Dorris; and when Mr.
Welbourne had taken refuge in such flight in an opposite direction as his
infirmity permitted, the temporary blinding and partial choking of Miss
Boundrish, who had received a dexterous handful while enjoying a hearty,
but unconcealed, yawn, further blunted the edge of her murderous desires,
and made her offer Eau de Cologne instead of poison, with whole-hearted
enjoyment of the damsel's spluttering indignation and vehement assertions
that she was poisoned.
"In that case," it was suggested, "best take an emetic at once," a

proposition received with scorn and fury, and further declarations that she
was blinded for life, and wondered why there were no gens d'armes, and
considered that the least Mrs. Allonby could have done was to give the
beast into custody, and she wished she had brought her father.
"But you can't give a large green frog on the top of a mountain on
wheels into custody, dear Miss Boundrish—Oh! pff!"
It was now Ermengarde's turn to be pelted by a Cyrano de Bergerac,

whose enormous nose was in striking contrast to his slender, elastic figure.
The Cyrano, who had been one of the party in the carriage whence the
serpent with the letter in its tail was thrown to Agatha, soon tired of raining
paper on to a steadily held sunshade, and went away, finding better sport in
a silken domino, one of a group walking in the road, who showed fight
gallantly, revealing a pair of dark eyes flashing with spirit and challenge.
After a sharp engagement, the domino's ammunition having run out, she
turned and ran, pursued and stopped by the Cyrano, who pelted her
unmercifully in the face, even holding a fold of the domino and spirting the
confetti under it to make her uncover, till at last he brought her to bay just
under the side of the stand, off the street.
"Beast!" muttered Ermengarde, her indignation intensified by the

English accent of the unchivalrous Cyrano. She would actually have rushed
to the assistance of the wronged lady, but that help came from another
quarter in the shape of a crocodile, which suddenly descended in a series of
astonishingly agile leaps from the very top of the great, shell-shaped car of
crocodiles, that was lumbering by, and, seizing the Cyrano de Bergerac by
the scruff of his neck, shook him like a rat till he was forced to let go the
lady, just as she slipped the domino back, discovering the indignant, tearful
face and blazing eyes of Mlle. Bontemps. This revelation was evidently
more discomfiting to the Cyrano than the furious assault of the crocodile,
from the slit-open throat of which glared the face of M. Isidore, white with
fury.
"Why, it's the very crocodile who threw you the violets," shouted
Dorris. "I thought I recognized him, and that plain and frumpish Bontemps
girl!"
If only the Boundrish had been effectually choked! Why had a weak and
culpable sympathy comforted her with Eau de Cologne?
The Cyrano was not to be shaken to death like a rat without showing
fight; in the tussle that ensued his rich costume suffered considerably before
the crocodile let him go; and what the one said and the other gasped and
growled in reply, though not intelligible through the din of bands and
crowds, was presumably of an uncomplimentary character.
Finally, flinging the long-nosed masquer from him, M. Isidore, his

crocodile head thrown back like a hood and helplessly wobbling behind
him, drew the insulted domino's hand through his arm with an air of
possession and protection, the rescued damsel clinging to him with evident
confidence and gratitude, and the two men, unconscious in their passion of
their absurd appearance, the crocodile pale and calm, the long-nose red with
confusion and fury and haughtily apologetic, stood glaring fiercely at each
other with question, accusation, and explanation.
Presently the long-nose, as if at the crocodile's request, produced a small
white square from the recesses of his sumptuous dress; the crocodile handed
him a similar square in return; they bowed and separated. M. Isidore led
Mlle. Bontemps away on his arm towards a blue glimpse of sea at the end
of a side-street, and the Cyrano, removing his plumed cap, and with it his
great nose, that had become very shaky in the course of the fray, disclosed
to Ermengarde's astonished gaze the features of the young Englishman of
Monte Carlo.
It was but a moment before the nose was hastily replaced, and its owner
turned back into the main street, where he stood talking to a Pierrot,
immediately in front of the stand, behind a soldier keeping the road.
"Thought you'd have known better than that," the Pierrot grumbled. "It
wasn't playing the game."
"I could have sworn it was the Countess," the Cyrano was heard to say
dejectedly. "And after yesterday—well, I didn't feel bound to play the game
with her. Besides, she wouldn't have cared."
"Let us go," said Ermengarde, suddenly sick of the fooling, and worried
by the band's mad tune repeated over and over again; but, looking round for
Agatha, she found her place empty, and Mr. Welbourne, who had returned
to his seat, unable to give any account of her.
Many thoughts were in Ermengarde's heart, while in response to the thin

man's timely suggestion of tea at Rumpelmayer's, they slipped out of the
press to the comparative quiet of the promenade by the sea, that glowed like
a peacock's velvety throat on the horizon, with the near shallows of
turquoise, and broke with a deep soft boom in snowy surf on the rocks.
She was glad of the fresh sea-breath and the beauty of the bay's broad
sweep between the purple headland of Bordighera and the craggy bluffs
above Monte Carlo. And when they turned into the Gardens under the tall
eucalyptus, the appearance of the woman of mystery coming down an
avenue of palms was a great relief. But a flush on Agatha's cheek and a
vision of the Spaniard rapidly disappearing under palms in the opposite

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Building Complex Temporal Explanations of Crime History Institutions and Agency 1St Edition Stephen Farrall Full Chapter PDF

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Building Complex Temporal

Explanations of Crime : History,

Market Power Politics: War, Institutions, and Strategic

ISE EBook Selling: Building Partnerships Stephen

Definition and Dispute: A Defense of Temporal

History of Policing, Crime, Disorder, Punishment Peter

The Battle Over Patents : History and Politics of

Examples & Explanations for Civil Procedure (Examples &

Temporal Gifts Whitney Hill

Temporal Gifts Whitney Hill

More information about this series at

ISSN 2731-0604 ISSN 2731-0612 (electronic)

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021

Cover illustration: © Melisa Hasan

“‘The tradition of all dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the

1 Introduction: Why Do We Need to Build Complex,

Glossary of Key Terms 141

Stephen Farrall is Research Chair in Criminology in the College of Busi-

Fig. 1.1 Varying time frames of causes and outcomes 2

Table 4.1 The causal factors for the Herald Capsize 57

Introduction: Why Do We Need to Build

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 1

Time Frame of Outcome(s)

Fig. 1.1 Varying time frames of causes and outcomes

To varying degrees of success, all of these have helped me to think

Why Do We Need Complex Explanations?

Furthermore, the ‘early days’ industrial revolution was powered by renew-

Outlining the Rest of the Book

Chapter 4 deals with a body of work, which I have not previously

individuals tend to exhibit different social attitudes depending on which

Abstract This chapter outlines what is meant by the term ‘complexity’,

Keywords Complexity · Time · Temporal explanations

Irrespective of what we may think of it, we live in an increasingly complex

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 9

There are several different levels of geographical governance (from local

Thinking About Levels (and Speeds) of Explanation

Thompson, 2014: 39). Thus an understanding of the impact of national-

Forms and Types of Complex Relationships

i. Cases in which an increase in x leads to an increase in y, but addi-

Complexity and Causation

system to be complex it requires three (or more) variables. As an example,

• that complex social processes have multiple causes;

Theorists of complexity place a heavy emphasis on the fact that small

The second example (this time hypothetical) concerns sentencing in

Learning from Individual-Level Thinking:

persistence of offending is enhanced. Similarly, involvement in offending

Serious and prolonged involvement in delinquent behaviour is likely to

Finally, Thornberry argues that developmental theories of offending high-

can shape criminal careers (2002: 167–168). He goes on to argue that

Historical and Constructivist Institutionalisms

Abstract This chapter describes the body of work known as histor-

Keywords Historical institutionalism · Constructivist institutionalism ·

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 29

… the formal rules, compliance procedures, and standard operating prac-

For others, the focus of historical institutionalism is on the state, govern-

If [historical institutionalism] teaches us anything, it is that the place to

Historical institutionalism, then, is an attempt to develop an under-

the central assumption of historical institutionalism is that it is more