The nature of institutions. The current debate

This article discusses the ontology of institutions and criticizes the notion that institutions are made only of incentives and individual actions. It is further argued that institutions are not constituted solely on the actions of individuals, and that they have a proper, regulated and linguistic ontology. Several approaches are compared on the subject and two main lines of research are identi¡ed in the literature: the attempt to construct a uni¡ed theory of institutions and a proposal to include constitutive rules in game theory