New Institutionalism: a Platform for Productive Integration in Social Sciences

The author formulates a thesis that a new institutionalism (NI) offers a viable platform for integration of various disciplines of social sciences. The thesis is supported by a number of arguments. First, new institutionalism creates a convenient theoretical framework, which facilitates addressing the essential dilemmas in economics, sociology and other disciplines of social sciences. Second, sociologists continuously recall and reinterpret classic social scientists. In that respect NI appears as an useful approach. Third, NI owes its existence to the key debates in social sciences, thus it is also an area suitable for exploring linkages among various related disciplines. Fourth, NI is a broad heuristic framework. Finally, NI contains normative aspects