The new institutionalism: toward a new paradigm?

Abstract

In the past three decades, the new institutionalism has made considerable progress in the field of social sciences. However, the article argues that this theoretical approach is in aconstruction process so that suffers from two key theoretical and conceptual problems:the lack of a clear definition of institution and a satisfactory explanation of how institutional change occurs. The main conclusion of the paper is that, despite the above, perhapsan institutional paradigm has already emerged in the field of social sciences without realizing it.