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This article provides an overview of the structure and evolution of the Institutional Analysis and Development (IAD) framework and a short introduction to its use by scholars to analyze a diversity of puzzles. It then addresses the relationship of IAD to a more complex framework for the analysis of social-ecological systems and concludes with a short discussion of future challenges facing IAD scholars.
KEY WORDS: policy analysis, institutional analysis, frameworks, social-ecological systems
Introduction
It is a great privilege and pleasure to have an issue of Policy Studies Journal devoted to a set of excellent articles illustrating how the Institutional Analysis and Development (IAD) framework can be applied to a variety of important policy questions. In this article, I plan to expand on earlier articles on the framework (Kiser & Ostrom, 1982; E. Ostrom, 2009) as well as discuss how and why the framework itself has changed over time. As more scholars use the IAD framework, as well as the more recent outgrowth of it - the social-ecological system (SES) framework - useful suggestions are made for ways to improve this theoretical foundation for research in policy analysis.
A continuing puzzle for many scholars is determining the difference between frameworks, theories, and models. The three terms are used almost interchangeably by scholars coming from different theoretical backgrounds. Basically, frameworks, theories, and models are nested concepts related to explaining human behavior. Colleagues who were trained at or are associated with the Workshop in Political Theory and Policy Analysis at Indiana University use all three concepts in our efforts to analyze policy processes and outcomes. In the first section, I will define the three types of theoretical analysis, how they relate to one another, and how they differ.
The second section will provide a general overview of the IAD framework and how it helps a policy analyst address key questions. The third section addresses how attributes of the biophysical world affect action situations and provides a brief introduction to the SES framework. A short concluding section reviews some of the future challenges facing IAD scholars.
Institutional Frameworks, Theories, and Models
The study of institutions depends on theoretical work undertaken at three levels of specificity that are often confused with one another. These essential foundations are (i) frameworks,...