An interpretive perspective on political institutions

This chapter offers an overview of an interpretive approach to political institutions. An interpretive approach emphasizes the intentional nature of human action: people have reasons for actions; they act on conscious and unconscious beliefs and desires. It also typically emphasizes the holistic nature of beliefs: people have reasons for their conscious and unconscious beliefs, so their beliefs are part of an interconnected web and cannot be reduced to allegedly objective facts about them. This interpretive perspective offers institutionalists an alternative micro-theory to that associated with rational choice theory. However, it also challenges their tendency to reify rules and norms, thereby encouraging them instead to decentre institutions, to explore the historical contingency and contemporary performance and contestability of institutions. By focusing on these theoretical questions, we simply sidestep methodological disputes, suggesting political scientists can make use of various quantitative and qualitative methods depending on their purposes.