Some Critical Remarks on March and Olsen's Rediscovering Institutions

Gunnar Sjöblom

Journal of Theoretical Politics, 1993, vol. 5, issue 3, 397-407

Abstract: March and Olsen's Rediscovering Institutions (1989) is considered as an outline of a theoretical approach, or as a research program. The book is criticized on six important grounds: the description of rival approaches is misleading - the language of the book is vague - the core concept of `institution' is not properly defined - no distinction is made between important and trivial decision-making - the claimed relation of interests to institutions has an almost totalitarian ring - the description of `aggregative' versus `integrative' processes is unduly complicated by the language in which they are compared. Although the book contains many brilliant insights, as a research program, the whole is less than the sum of its parts.

Keywords: institutionalism; rational choice (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 1993
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0951692893005003005 (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:jothpo:v:5:y:1993:i:3:p:397-407

DOI: 10.1177/0951692893005003005

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Journal of Theoretical Politics
Bibliographic data for series maintained by SAGE Publications ().