The Institutional Logic Of Political World

The concept of institution and the institutional analysis make up the fundamental theoretical and empirical elements of all disciplines of social science. Political institutions as most important things in politics are the main subject of political studies. The new institutionalism in political science grows as crucial institutional approaches for borrowing and expanding a lot of academic fruits of other disciplines, which provides necessary bases for approaching political institutional theories. However, different schools of new institutionalism embodied from diversity of perspectives and approaches set bars to get a coherent institutionalist project of institutional study. Pointing out the inner divergences in analytical levels and approaches, and studying the development of institutional studies in political science are conductive to consider the theory building from a comprehensive perspective. According to inherent claims and the dimensions of approaching institutional theories, that research project must underline the relationship between scientism and humanism, concept analysis and theoretical construction, agency and structure, and intellect retrospect and notable blossom. Consideration of relevant thoughts of new institutionalism and the exploration of meaning, essence, characters and types of political institution provide a necessary logical premise. Thus this thesis builds a comprehensive analytical mode from two points of view, the development of emergence, persistence and change of political institution and the actor's evaluation toward political institution.This thesis contains six parts: Part one, the development of institutional study in political science; Part two, the meaning, essence, characteristics and types of political institution; Part three, the emergence of political institution; Part four, the persistence of political institution; Part five, the change of political institution; Part six, the evaluation toward political institution. Part one reviews the development of institutional study in political science, reveals internal tension of theoretical analysis of new institutionalism, then puts forward some suggestions about general theory building in institutional study by surveying the old and new institutionalist schools and standpoints. Both the emergence of new institutionalism in political science and the development of traditional institutional study compose the project of theory building in political institutional research. The traditional institutional study in political science generates the research interests and issues orientation of new institutionalism, contributing to understand its theoretical sources and novelty. By analysing the traces of institutional approach, the basic thought, theoretical logic and internal tension of new institutionalism are present, and also the theoretical orientation is revealed.Part two defines the concept of political institution, and explores its essence, characteristics and types, providing the theoretical basis for comprehensive new institutionalist research project and, especially, analytical approaches. Political institutions could be defined as modes of rules and organizations concerning acquiring and allocating interests, which are guarded by coerced enforcement of political power, and are in relation to law making and policy deciding. The essences of political institutions are three crossed aspects, that are the order status making political life possible, the power structures and arrangements, and the context bringing to bear on individual agency such as actors'choices. The basic characteristics of political institutions contain four points, the structural modes, the binding forces, the stability and constancy, and the idea factors. The types of political institutions cover the rule-based and organization-based institutions, the formal and informal institutions, and the single and compound institutions.Part three focuses on the emergence of political institution, and points out its three main ways, that are institutional design, institutional evolution and institutional choice. The point of view concerning institutional design is based on the logical premise of constructivist rationality, perfect knowledge and plan order, proposing institutional design can be achieved through design of polity, procedure and policy. The point of view concerning institutional evolution is based on the logical premise of evolutional rationality, limit knowledge and spontaneous order, proposing institutional evolution can be achieved through evolutionary games and social evolution. The point of view concerning institutional choice is based on the logical premise of limit rationality, institutional context, power conflict and time dimention, proposing political actors can choose institutional modes under institutional binding.Part four examines the persistence of political institution from theoretical perspective by exploring the premises of institutional persistence and then the key machanism of persistence. The promise of political institutional persistance is the epistemological basis and the necessary condition of enduring, which contains existing, stable and effective. And it concerns historical procedure, endogenous variebles and exogenous paremeters. With respect to the promise mentioned above, the approaches of institutional persistance contains self-reinforcement of path dependence, coerced enforcement of political power, intrimate engagement with institutional context, and necessary sustainability of mind.Part five studies how political institution changes, the concerned questions are theoretical basis and spectific ways of institutional change. It is necessary to define the concept of institutional change and explore the conditions and dynamics of change according to new institutionalist analysis, that we can expand theoretical understanding of political institutional change. Institutional change could be understand as deviation of given institutional trajectories under certain conditions which contain providers of change, random factors and institutional types, being adjusted by three important machanism.Part six reserches the evaluation toward political institution from theoretical perspect, reveals the basic ground of actor's evaluation, then analyses the two dimensions of institutional evaluation. It concerns three aspects, which are not only the external essential expression of political institution, the reflection of idea characteristic of that, but also the demand for good political life. Institutional evaluation partly derives from the idea and historical characters of political institution, so it presents two dimensions, that are utility and ethics and should be placed in complex framwork of historical and actual evaluation.