Institutionalism and the Normative Study of Politics: From Rational Choice to Behavioralism

We discuss the role of institutionalism in the normative analysis of public policy. In contrast to existing approaches to policy analysis, institutionalism focuses on the policy process rather than a specific policy outcome. Historically, institutionalism has been developed within the rational choice paradigm. This has led to sustained criticism by behaviorally oriented political scientists. We show that this dependence on rational choice is not a necessary component of institutionalism and discuss examples of behavioral approaches to institutional analysis.