The Development Process and Research Frontiers of Institutional Grammar: A Systematic Literature Review

Institutional Grammar is a valuable tool for systematic institutional analysis. In the nearly thirty years since Ostrom first proposed the concept of “Institutional Grammar”, the application of Institutional Grammar to analyze different rules, norms, and strategies has gradually become an important analytical tool in the field of public policy and public administration. Theoretically, Institutional Grammar proposes the concept of institutional statements that unify the diverse definitions of institutions. Whether it is an “institution-in-form” or an “institution-in-use”, it will eventually be transformed into an institutional statement and a syntactic analytical structure. In terms of application of the methodology, the coding method for the Institutional Grammar tool has undergone many additions and modifications, and the evolution of the coding method has influenced its research application and development.

The coding of Institutional Grammar has evolved from “ADICO” to “ABDICO”, and most recently to “IG2.0”. Instead of focusing on the application of Institutional Analysis and Development (IAD), scholars are now attempting to analyze institutional design in the context of a wider range of theoretical backgrounds. At the same time, Institutional Grammar can also be combined with methods such as agent-based modeling and social network analysis that help to establish problem perspectives and to collect data, etc. Regarding existing research on Institutional Grammar, most studies have been conducted with cases and data sources from Europe and the United States, and the authors of the related studies are also concentrated in Europe and the United States. In the Chinese world, Institutional Grammar has not attracted sufficient attention. However, the value of Institutional Grammar in the institutional analysis, public policy, and public administration disciplines is obvious. This paper presents a systematic literature review to analyze 82 Institutional Grammar studies published in SSCI journals between 1995 and 2023. It introduces the basic content of Institutional Grammar, the development process of the “instrumentalization” of Institutional Grammar, and the application of the Institutional Grammar tool.

The analysis in this paper finds that in the evolution of Institutional Grammar, the changes and optimization in the coding methods are ahead of the refinement of the theories. Although the policy areas in which Institutional Grammar has been applied have expanded from natural resources and the environment to other areas, in the process of combining with other research methods, it only provides assistance to the other research methods and it neglects its own theoretical development. This paper therefore summarizes the problems that must be resolved in the future development of Institutional Grammar. In terms of theoretical development, this mainly includes analyzing the boundaries and differences between diverse types of institutional statements and solving the problem of missing information in the post-coding aggregation process. In terms of application of the tool, attention should be paid to analysis of “institutions in practice”, the use of more diversified research methods, and expansion of the research to Chinese cases.