Institutionalization and Political Development: A Conceptual and Theoretical Analysis

Abstract

In recent years, institutionalization has become one of the key concepts in comparative politics in general, and in the study of political development in particular. This elegant and almost geometrically tidy theory of political order best articulated by Huntington has been acclaimed as a major new school, one that will be able perhaps to narrow what La Palombara called the ‘widening chasm’ between ‘macrotheories and microapplications in comparative politics’. Indeed, Huntington in his book attempted to apply his theoretical tenets to the analysis of such important phenomena as military intervention in politics, corruption and violence, all this via the usage of a few major variables. In the notoriously slippery field of theorizing in comparative politics, this constituted a welcome influx of fresh air. No wonder, then, that Huntington's theory and concepts have been widely prevalent and frequently referred to—again a relative innovation in the easy-come-easy-go world of theories in the study of political development.