Institutional Analysis and the Study of Education

ism” has captured the imagination of scholars working in academic fields that contribute to educational research and policy analysis, including sociology, political science, economics, and organization theory. The rise of this theoretical perspective has been due, in part, to a widespread disenchantment of social scientists with models of social and organizational action in which relatively autonomous actors are seen as operating with unbounded rationality in order to pursue their self-interests. It also has been due to advances in theory and research, reflected in the publication of several influential volumes showing how a “new” institutionalism could be applied to research in particular areas of study. March and Olsen (1989), for example, applied institutional theory to the study of politics broadly, and North (1990), DiMaggio (1998), Powell and DiMaggio (1991), Scott (1995), and Brinton and Nees (1998) applied it to the study of economic change and development, organization theory, and the sociological study of institutions respectively. The emergence of a new institutionalism across the social sciences signals the possibility of a new unity in these often fragmented disciplines, and it promises to provide researchers with a more universal language to describe and conceptualize research problems that are common to many fields. Despite its promise, applications of the new institutionalism to the study of education have been scattered and diffuse (Bacharach, Masters, and