Can contemporary political institutions and organisations respond effectively to challenges like the disquiet about the environment? Can they defuse the conflict between environment and development, and then implement ideas like sustainable development? This chapter and the following one focus on concepts developed by social and political theorists which have guided discussions about the limits and likelihood of political action in general. This chapter will begin by giving further consideration to the notion of institutions. I will also concentrate on how social and political theorists frame their analyses of institutions and organisations. Do they, for instance, assign to political institutions and organisations a ‘central’ status in the social system? The final part of this chapter will centre on the relevance of traditional concepts for analysing institutions, and on the tendency of social and political theorists to formulate problems in dichotomous terms. Chapter 5 will then consider the problems of communication between political institutions and other social systems, and explore the possibilities for overcoming these difficulties.

Defining Institutions

There has been a renaissance in the study of institutions influenced by writers like March and Olsen (1984; 1989) and by many others (Evans et al. 1985; Brennan and Buchanan 1985; Hall 1986; Shepsle 1989; North 1990; Ostrom 1990). This literature views institutions as structures, comprising rules and standardised procedures, for shaping both individual and collective behaviour. This includes political behaviour and other forms of social behaviour and communication between individuals.