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39 Pol'y Stud. J. 1 (2011)

handle is hein.journals/plyssjnl39 and id is 1 raw text is: j %J_) A LUL.t y a k,t~~ t..J LLJI nac t a The Policy Studies Journal, Vol. 39, No. 1, 2011 The Design and Promise of the Institutional Analysis and Development Framework William Blomquist and Peter deLeon In September 2009, Peter deLeon and Christopher Weible, co-editors of this journal, approached Dr. Elinor Ostrom with the suggestion that she identify a list of authors who would contribute to a state-of-the-art report on the Institutional Analysis and Development (IAD) Framework that had been formulated over a number of years by Dr. Ostrom and her colleagues at Indiana University's Workshop in Political Theory and Policy Analysis. The co-editors suggested that while there was a sizable literature on the IAD, it was circulated within the policy community, and it was not as well disseminated and utilized as should be the case. Dr. Ostrom agreed and proposed a program to develop a series of articles, which included a two-day seminar at the School of Public Affairs, University of Colorado Denver. These articles were then subjected to the journal's peer review process. The revised manuscripts were given a second presentation at the 2009 meeting of the American Political Science Association. This issue of the Policy Studies Journal reflects these activities. This Introduction briefly comments on the individual articles as well as suggests avenues for the continued refinements of the IAD. Elinor Ostrom's Background on the Institutional Analysis and Development Framework (Ostrom, 2011 this issue) is an exceptional primer for readers who are curious about-but not especially well acquainted with-how the IAD frame- work developed and what are its major elements. One should pay particularly close attention to the terms Ostrom uses and the way her ideas and concepts are articulated with care and precision. The essay An Introduction to the IAD and the Language of the Ostrom Workshop: A Simple Guide to a Complex Framework-prepared by Michael McGinnis and included in this issue as an appendix-is an equally valuable resource for readers who may already be familiar with the IAD framework but could use a concise exposition of it and a reference guide for particular components of it. As with any framework, IAD's primary value lies in providing a means of organizing inquiry into a subject and a set of variables to examine-or at least a set of questions to ask. It does not tell us what will happen, and it does not tell us whether what happened was necessarily good or bad. Primarily, the IAD framework assists us in clarifying what to think about when we are observing a phenomenon 1 0190-292X © 2011 Policy Studies Organization Published by Wiley Periodicals, Inc., 350 Main Street Malden, MA 02148, USA, and 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford, OX4 2DQ.