The IAD Framework and Its Tools for Policy and Institutional Analysis

The Institutional Analysis and Development (IAD) framework provides policy analysts with concepts and variables, a meta-theoretical language, and diagnostic and empirical tools to systematically explore and evaluate policy-making processes, outputs, and outcomes as well as build theory that transcends specific policy contexts. In this chapter, we provide a brief overview of the framework and then describe and illustrate the analytical devices, or tools, that the IAD framework provides analysts for examining different dimensions of institutional arrangements. The institutional tools we examine include the rule and the property rights typologies, the grammar of institutions, the network of action situations, and the SES framework. The IAD framework and institutional tools support analysts in diagnosing institutional arrangements and their performance and prescribing workable alternatives.