Fauna-sensitive road design in practice: lessons from Australia

A key method for institutional analysis is the Institutional Grammar Tool (IGT), introduced by Crawford and Ostrom in 1995, which facilitates the breakdown of legal documents into components, further named institutional statements. This systematic review examines the IGT’s evolution and applicability in scientific literature to understand institutional dynamics and policymaking. Using bibliometric analysis and systematic literature review, we analysed the content of 432 articles spanning 1995 to 2023, focusing on IGT usage and outputs, out of which 62 articles were relevant for the present analysis. The analysis reveals a significant and promising trend in IGT’s adoption, with a notable surge in publications since 2010. North American authors lead in IGT usage, particularly in legislative content analysis. Case studies were focused on environmental and social-ecological domains. While IGT remains a primary analysis method in most studies, complementary methods such as interviews and qualitative comparative analysis supplement its application. The advantages of IGT include enhanced institutional understanding and rigorous policy analysis, while limitations such as interpretative challenges and time constraints persist. Thematic clusters in keyword networks show how research interests are changing over time. For example, regulatory governance was studied in the past, whereas lately normative frameworks and computational modelling in conservation governance have been employed. This review underlines the increasing relevance of the IGT in institutional analysis and policy studies. By synthesizing trends and methodologies, it provides valuable insights into IGT's evolution and challenges, paving the way for future research endeavours aimed at refining its applicability and advancing governance theory and practice.

Introduction—Stories of the old world: The Narrative Policy Framework in the European context

The Institutional Grammar Tool (IGT) is an important and relatively recent innovation in policy theory and analysis. It is conceptualized to empirically operationalize the insights of the Institutional Analysis and Development (IAD) framework. In the last decade, political scientists have offered a number of applications of the IGT, mainly focused on disclosing and scrutinizing in-depth the textual configurations of policy documents. These efforts, involving micro-level analyses of syntax as well as more general classifications of institutional statements according to rule types, have underpinned empirical projects mainly in the area of environmental and common-pool resources. Applications of IGT are still in their infancy, yet the growing momentum is sufficient for us to review what has been learned so far. We take stock of this recent, fast-growing literature, analyzing a corpus of 26 empirical articles employing IGTs published between 2008 and 2017. We examine them in terms of their empirical domain, hypotheses, and methods of selection and analysis of institutional statements. We find that the existing empirical applications do not add much to explanation, unless they are supported by research questions and hypotheses grounded in theory. We offer three conclusions. First, to exploit the IGT researchers need to go beyond the descriptive, computational approach that has dominated the field until now. Second, IGT studies grounded in explicit hypotheses have more explanatory leverage, and therefore, should be encouraged when adopting the tool outside the Western world. Third, by focusing on rules, researchers can capture findings that are more explanatory and less microscopic.

An enduring challenge for the policy and political sciences is valid and reliable depiction of policy designs. One emerging approach for dissecting policy designs is the application of Sue Crawford and Elinor Ostrom's institutional grammar tool. The grammar tool offers a method to identify, systematically, the core elements that comprise policies, including target audiences, expected patterns of behavior, and formal modes of sanctioning for noncompliance. This article provides three contributions to the study of policy designs by developing and applying the institutional grammar tool. First, we provide revised guidelines for applying the institutional grammar tool to the study of policy design. Second, an additional component to the grammar, called the oBject, is introduced. Third, we apply the modified grammar tool to four policies that shape Colorado State Aquaculture to demonstrate its effectiveness and utility in illuminating institutional linkages across levels of analysis. The conclusion summarizes the contributions of the article as well as points to future research and applications of the institutional grammar tool.

BackgroundTraffic and transport infrastructure is a vital prerequisite for social and economic development as well as the socio-spatial integration of countries and regions’ societal strata. It sets the course for the future of mobility and transport-related social and economic development and is thus inherently political. Deficiencies in traffic infrastructure provision, such as delays in project deployment and exceeding costs, increase the potential for public discontent. It is the mission of public audits to identify, diminish and remedy infrastructure deployment problems—and to encourage best practice models and policy learning. Despite their importance, shortcomings that audit offices identify as well as the reactions and follow-up measures of the addressees to official problem statements remain vastly under-researched. As the transport area is one of the core emitters of CO2 and at the heart of many transition policies to tackle climate change, lack of knowledge regarding transformative change opportunities in the mobility sector is detrimental to the success of these adaptations. One major policy issue in this respect are reform strategies regarding transport and traffic infrastructure planning and project implementation. Our systematic analysis of public audit reports in Germany on traffic and transport infrastructure project deployment contributes to a better understanding of this issue.ResultsWe detect patterns of compliance and resistance to audit office assessments by the executing administrations in traffic infrastructure project deployment. While we witness at least the partial compliance and announcement of corrections in 51% of the cases, in about 19% of the cases, the responsible authorities acknowledge the audit’s critique (partially), but do not signal concrete willingness for further corrections. In more than 20% of the identified audit statements, the audit’s assessments are even rejected without corrections to the further projects’ execution.ConclusionWe analyze the extents and limits of organizational learning and institutional adaptation of public control strategies in mobility and transport-related infrastructure provision. Our contribution discusses possible reasons for sustainable transport and traffic infrastructure development deficits as well as shortcomings in infrastructure planning and project deployment. We thus try to open new avenues for debate on improved sustainable infrastructure policy and planning.

We compare the Narrative Policy Framework (NPF) and the Institutional Grammar Tool (IGT). Given the focus of this special issue on the NPF, we first theorize how the IGT can contribute to the development of NPF categories, but also how the former gains conceptual leverage from the latter. We argue that it is useful to consider jointly NPF and IGT as this expands the benefit of NPF usage for policy researchers—uncovering not only the stories policy actors tell but also what these stories mean in terms of institutional statements. We provide a demonstration of how the conversation between these two policy lenses may develop by analyzing original data on the design of consultation procedures in the European Union, Finland, Ireland, and Malta.

What is the relationship between the design of regulations and levels of individual compliance? To answer this question, Crawford and Ostrom's institutional grammar tool is used to deconstruct regulations governing the aquaculture industry in Colorado, USA. Compliance with the deconstructed regulatory components is then assessed based on the perceptions of the appropriateness of the regulations, involvement in designing the regulations, and intrinsic and extrinsic motivations. The findings suggest that levels of compliance with regulations vary across and within individuals regarding various aspects of the regulatory components. As expected, the level of compliance is affected by the perceived appropriateness of regulations, participation in designing the regulations, and feelings of guilt and fear of social disapproval. Furthermore, there is a strong degree of interdependence among the written components, as identified by the institutional grammar tool, in affecting compliance levels. The paper contributes to the regulation and compliance literature by illustrating the utility of the institutional grammar tool in understanding regulatory content, applying a new Q‐Sort technique for measuring individual levels of compliance, and providing a rare exploration into feelings of guilt and fear outside of the laboratory setting.

Environment Action Programmes (EAP's) are the most important documents defining the environmental policies within the European Union. Their implementation, over the previous 50 years, represented a significant advance in raising eco-friendly awareness and suggesting solutions for environmental problems in the European Union. In this paper, we used Institutional Grammar Tool and network analysis to identify the evolution of EU EAP's by investigating the most recent two programmes (7th Environment Action Programme and 8th Environment Action Programme), particularly in priority objectives, institutional statements, enforcement perspectives, and projected participation of stakeholders. We found that the EU's 8th Environment Action Programme (2021–2030) is further streamlined and target oriented as compared to 7th Environment Action Programme. Furthermore, institutional statements included in the 8th EAP will be implemented predominantly at the levels of European Union and European Commission. On the contrary, in the 7th EAP, the number of institutions, frameworks, and stakeholders is higher and often regional and local (e.g., European Union, Environment Action Programme, European Environment Agency, European Commission, European Parliament, Convention on Biological Diversity, regional authorities, local authorities). The close links of the 8th EAP targets with the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and the European Green Deal represent an important step towards a greater applicability of environmental policies in the European Union. Our study reveals that comparative analysis of legal documents using Institutional Grammar Tool and network analysis can assist policymakers in assessing the drafting of legal environmental documents and obtain indispensable information about the changes to improve environmental policies.

Objective: To measure comprehensiveness of California campus tobacco policies. Participants: Sixteen campuses representing different regions, institution types, and policies. Research occurred June–August 2013. Methods: Comprehensiveness was scored using American College Health Association's (ACHA) Position Statement on Tobacco. The Institutional Grammar Tool was used to breakdown policy statements into Strategies, Norms, or Rules. Differences in ACHA score and number of Strategies, Norms, and Rules were assessed by region, policy, and institution type. Results: Median ACHA score was 0.35 (scale of 0–1). Schools with 100% tobacco-free policies had highest ACHA scores, but failed to address relationships between schools and tobacco companies. Less than half the schools assessed (7/16) had Rules (enforceable penalties related to policies). In 67% of the policy statements, individuals doing the action were implied (not specifically stated). Conclusion: Campuses should address ACHA recommendations related to campus relationships with tobacco companies, include enforceable rules, and specify individuals and entities covered by policy.

Indirect effects are important considerations when making consequence analyses in general and in strategic environmental assessments in particular of potential transport solutions and infrastructure plans. The primary objective of this paper is to emphasize the need for a deeper understanding of the long‐term system effects of investments in transport infrastructure with a focus on the structuring effects that roads and railways have on society, e.g. altered transport patterns, altered settlement structures and changes in use of the built environment. Special attention is given to the following potential indirect effects: increased total transport volume, increased share of private motorists and truck transport, increased urban sprawl, and increased energy use in buildings. The conditions that determine the power of the effects are discussed and a number of key factors to be considered in transport infrastructure planning, especially in strategic environmental assessments, are suggested. Since many indirect effects emerge over time, an extended time perspective is of essence. Therefore, scenario techniques may be useful when analysing indirect effects in transport planning processes.

Coastal areas are under intense pressure worldwide because diverse stakeholders rely on coastal resources, and the supply of land is highly limited. Coast-dependent economic activities like transportation and logistics infrastructure in the Jade Bay, Germany, have experienced extensive demand for land. The situation is more interesting because national parks encircle the seaport. Understanding the complex seaside–landside dynamics following the development of Jade Weser Port is crucial for promoting sustainability, as massive development exceeds existing spatial capacity. However, a comprehensive framework to assess land use conflicts when dealing with infrastructure development in sensitive coastal areas is often missing. We analyze the origin of land use developments and the planning process at different administrative levels by retracing land use changes from 1970 to 2015 using a time series of satellite images, analyzing planning documents, and examining realized activities. We look for an embedding of transport infrastructure development and its feedback on land use. As a consequence of land use conflicts, these land system dynamics create winners and losers across multidisciplinary aspects. Our findings reflect interdisciplinary aspects which discuss both societal changes and the constellation of inadequate planning approaches to address the complexity of coastal land use. The degree to which these activities cause land use conflicts depends on institutional settings, especially the consistency of ICZM and infrastructure planning.

Dada la centralidad que la reforma educativa del Pacto por México pone a las reglas del juego ―vis a vis conducta docente―, este artículo examina el diseño institucional que le precede. Se problematizaron afirmaciones de que el diseño previo creaba problemas de agencia. El objetivo fue demostrar la configuración de un tipo específico de problema de agencia: el riesgo moral organizacional. Se de-construyó la normatividad con la Herramienta de la Gramática Institucional de Crawford y Ostrom (1995). El IGT permite identificar sistemáticamente las reglas presentes ―si las hubiere― en documentos de políticas, develando el código genético de las políticas que configuran arenas, lugar en que los individuos interactúan. Se encontró que la forma en que se estructura el control administrativo en los planteles en relación a la aplicación de sanciones a maestros constituye una situación de riesgo moral dado sus supuestos.

The institutional grammar tool in policy analysis and applications to resilience and robustness research

Explanations for collective action focus on both institutions and narratives. On the one hand, institutional approaches emphasize the role of rules that guide human behavior. On the other hand, accounting for the narratives through which policy actors make sense of their actions helps in understanding strategic behavior. However, applying institutional and narrative perspectives together is daunting, in part because there has not been a common way to integrate the two approaches. In this article, we draw from Actor‐Network Theory (ANT) to elaborate a novel analytical approach that combines ANT with the Institutional Grammar Tool (IGT) and the Narrative Policy Framework (NPF). We use IGT's and NPF's analytical categories in a processual perspective to examine how policy‐makers strategically use institutions and narratives to create and stabilize a network of actors in innovation policy processes. We illustrate our approach through an in‐depth analysis of the development of a smart city.

The COVID-19 pandemic is characterised by active law-making processes aimed at health care and support of different categories of population in many countries in the world. Starting from 2019, due to negative demographic trends, Russia has experienced the active transformation of the state support system for families having children. This trend has strengthened during the pandemic. Our research aims to analyse the internal characteristics of the family policy, namely the state support for families having children, during the year preceding pandemic and within the pandemic period. We consider the dynamics of the family policy architecture by means of Institutional Grammar Tool (IGT) analysis and demonstrate the opportunities for using the results of such analyses in the highly dynamic situation of the COVID-19 pandemic. We analysed 11 federal legal acts adopted in Russia after January 1, 2020 that addressed parents and offered support for families with children. These acts contain 78 institutional statements that we coded in accordance with the IGT rules, defining the attributes, objects, deontics and conditions in each sentence. Our results are as follows: 1) Russian family policy before and during COVID-19 pandemic can be divided into three stages, including the short-term second stage from the beginning of 2020 to the beginning of the pandemic. The most obvious changes in the three stages are seen in terms of the Objects and Conditions of the institutional statements. At the second and third stages we see a major expansion of support receivers (the Objects) as well as changes in the Conditions for the benefits gain. Conditions vary greatly and differ in terms of regularity of measure and the type of the payment granted; 2) Legal acts adopted do not always indicate clear Attributes, i.e., the subjects (federal and regional authorities) responsible for the implementation of the particular rule sometimes can hinder the implementation of the regulation; 3) Classification of the parameters of the main support measures in the framework and categories of the IGT analyses lead us to the probable concept of the information policy that would be clear to the beneficiaries of support measures.