‘‘separation of powers’’ was no longer applicable to modern parliamentary systems.
Older institutional theories amalgamated elements of new theories such as the
theory of pluralism and methods which went beyond the old-fashioned juridical
normative approach to institutions. Theoretical concepts like ‘‘pluralism’’ or ‘‘fed-
eralism’’ can be put into empirical operation with institutionalist, behavioralist, or
rational choice methods.
Political science initially tried to legitimize itself with a revival of the Aristotelian
concept of politics. It tended to favor the institutional approach—compared to
eschatological theories of politics from St Augustine to Marx. The virtue of the
classical institutional approach was that it started from the assumption that the
political process is ‘‘open’’ in principle, and full citizens are basically ‘‘equal.’’ No
ontological essentialist diVerences between princes and the people, enlightened elites
and humble subjects, or proletarian avant-gardes and the masses were accepted.
Classical institutionalists from Montesquieu to de Tocqueville were never naive
ontological analysts but described institutions in comprehensive social settings
of a system. Each institution was linked to a special promoting social group.
Only rarely were deistic or mechanistic metaphors of a clockwork applied in a
formalistic way to political institutions. The ‘‘mechanics’’ of institutions included
contradictory elements, such as in inter- and intrainstitutional conXicts in two-
chamber systems of parliaments and the diVerence of government and opposition.
Most institutional theories favored a procedural concept of politics. For Max
Weber the typical occidental development—deviating from the rest of the
world—can be explained by institutional diVerentiation of religious and secular
power. The most interesting institution for Max Weber was the constitution of
‘‘cities’’ which were not mere agglomerations around a power center and which
deviated from the pattern of patrimonial and feudal systems of rule (‘‘Herrschaft’’).
From Max Weber to Stein Rokkan ‘‘modernization’’ in politics was basically
understood as a process of institution building. Contrary to economic modern-
ization theories, institutions such as bureaucracies or the military were seen as the
momentum of modernization. Weberian concepts were inXuential: bureaucracies
were superior to parochial or feudal elites. Beyond Weber some analysts preferred
bureaucratized party politics to bureaucratic rule.
A social concept of institutions gradually diVered from merely normative legal
and political theories. In Britain, Barker ( 1961 , 166 ) suspected even after 1945 that
most institutionalists hailed their preferred institution as a disguise for a cult around
a social group. In French legal theory, Maurice Hauriou ( 1906 ) tried to avoid this
danger of the old institutionalism by the diVerentiation of ‘‘institution-chose’’ having
objective dignity and the ‘‘institution-groupe’’ suspected of being only disguised
selWsh group interest. Group theories of institutions were mostly unable to agree
on the relative weight of certain institutions. The continental Roman law tradition
suggested that ‘‘the state’’ was the most important institution, whereas a leftist
British tradition from guild-socialism to Harold Laski insisted that the state was
political institutions—old and new 747