Wrst section of this chapter thus considers the place to be given to organizations
and to procedures in the deWnition of institutions: Major diVerences across the
social sciences and in particular in the political, social, and economicWelds emerge
in this context. The second section is concerned with institutionalization: Marked
diVerences are found among the social sciences in this respect as well.
1 Institutions in the Political
Context in Contrast to the Economic
and Social Context
.........................................................................................................................................................................................
- 1 The Non-problematic Character of Institutions in
Political Science up to the 1990 s
The indiVerence which political scientists displayed traditionally with respect to
what constitutes political institutions is remarkable: Indeed, at any rate up to the
emergence of the behavioral movement, the empirical study of politics seemed to be
viewed as coextensive with the study of political institutions. Thus a department in a
university could be labeled ‘‘Department of Political Institutions’’ to indicate that it
was concerned with empirical politics, not political philosophy. Thus studies under-
taken in the early post-Second World War period did not even need to mention
institutions in their index nor did Finer’s three-volumeHistory of Government
published in 1993 do so. Despite the ‘‘concept clariWcation’’ aims of that work, Sartori’s
Social Science Concepts, published in 1980 , does not refer to institutions at all, in the
index or elsewhere, as if the concept was ‘‘non-problematic’’ and ‘‘self-evident.’’
Discussion, though not controversy, had begun to arise on the subject, however,
as the study of politics, even before behaviorism emerged, went beyond (or below)
classical ‘‘political institutions’’ and into the social realm in particular by studying
groups. In hisGovernmental Process, published in 1962 , Truman stated: ‘‘The
word [institution] does not have a meaning suYciently precise to enable one to
state with conWdence that one group is an institution whereas another is not’’
( 1962 , 26 ). Some questions were being raised as to whether bodies such as groups
were institutions in the same way as parties or legislatures; but the matter was
mentioned indirectly, casually even. In their introduction to their volume onThe
Politics of the Developing Areas( 1960 ), Almond and Coleman drew a distinction, in
the context of the ‘‘Interest Articulation’’ function, between ‘‘( 1 ) institutional
interest groups’’ and three other types of groups (non-associational, anomic, and
associational) ( 1960 , 33 ), but no attempt was made to deWne these ‘‘institutional
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