There is one "new institutionalist" who talks about change all of the time: me.
Rat choicers are not the only new institutionalists and the fact that rat choice has trouble dealing with time does not mean it is necessarily so.

It is easy to think in terms of what the parties will learn from their experiences. If a more or less two party system emerges (and remember Britain does not currently have a very pure one, so there is no reason to expect 2.0000 parties), and one is the government and the other is not, whatever the government does that might make them unpopular will be attacked by the opposition, no matter what their original policy preferences. In the process two different images will emerge, based on the accidental selection of issues to be dealt with. This is not sorting themselve out. It is deciding what the party will stand for.

The very first election may not produce anything much like two parties because there will be way too many candidates running in each district, as in 1947. The results will not make sense, but they will be the resuls anyway. After the local elections, people are not as worried about running as independents. If many independents win, the actual results may depend on their post-election decisions. The possibility of an LDP dominant result is also quite real, even 60%of the SMD seats with 40% of the vote. In which case, the pressure on the opposition to merge or die will be huge. Knowing general theory never releases from the necessity to study history.

SReed.