Formulating the Elements of Institutional Analysis

Abstract

"At the Workshop, we have attempted to bring together those aspects of work in different social sciences that help to build a more general method of analysis which can be used across different types of institutional arrangements. Drawing on the work in diverse fields, we are developing a conceptual framework that can be used to analyze the patterns of outcomes in many different settings whether they occur in markets, legislatures, teams, bureaus or firms. The purpose of the framework is to explain aggregated results occurring in many different types of interdependent social, economic, and political situations using the same set of underlying variables. The framework is a genetic type of theory. By genetic, I mean that a small number of essential building blocks are identified in the framework. These are viewed as being combined and re-combined in many different configurations. Underlying the surface diversity of human life, we are presuming that we can use a single set of analytical variables to construct empirically testable explanations of the choice of strategies and results achieved in diverse settings. Alternatively, one might characterize the framework as a grammatical theory similar in its intent to the universal grammar developed by Chomsky (1957; 1965; 1975) (see also, Campbell, 1982)."