Criticism of the institutional approach in comparative political analysis has come up in successive waves. Comment.

The old institutional approach studied constitutions, legislatures, executives and courts through legal-formal and historical-descriptive methods. The criticism arrived in distinct waves.

First wave — behaviouralism (1950s-60s). The charge was that the approach was formal-legal, describing rules rather than behaviour; configurative, treating each country as unique and precluding comparison; parochial, confined to Western Europe and North America; and static, unable to explain change. It was also normative when it claimed to be descriptive.

Second wave — the developing world and systems theory. Decolonisation exposed the deeper problem: identical constitutions produced entirely different politics. Almond and Powell's structural-functionalism shifted attention to functions performed rather than institutions named, and Easton's systems model to inputs and outputs. Almond and Verba's The Civic Culture (1963) relocated explanation in political culture.

Third wave — political economy and the state. Marxist and dependency writers argued institutional analysis mistook the surface for the structure, ignoring class and the world economy.

The recovery. New institutionalism from the 1980s — March and Olsen's Rediscovering Institutions (1984) — answered the criticism by redefining institutions as rules, norms and practices that shape behaviour, not merely as formal bodies. Its three variants, rational-choice, historical and sociological, restore institutions as explanatory variables while accepting the behavioural insistence on evidence.