Policy Community Realism versus ‘New’ Institutionalist Ambiguity

Abstract

There has been widespread interest in the term ‘institution’ within political science in the past five years. Two principal uses of this are identified. The first is associated with the policy community literature and in this sense the institution is an extra-constitutional policy-making arrangement between ministries and clientelistic groups. The second use of the term is associated with state-centred authors who wish to argue for the relative autonomy of political institutions. In this second use there is ambiguity about the scope of the term institution; whether it is, or is not, intended to be confined to traditional institutions or whether the disaggregated state embraces the newer policy community phenomenon.