Comparative Party System
Mar. 16, 2005
3
Samuel P. Huntington(1968), Steven Levitsky(2003), Angelo Panebianco(1988) and Scott
Mainwaring(1999).
The various definitions are as follows.
The first is Huntingtion’s definition.
According to his definition,
“Institutionalization is the process by which organizations and procedures acquire value
and stability”(Huntington, 1968:12).
This concept means institutionalized organization
is for its own sake, and it happens when actors switch their pursuit of certain goals by
means of organization to the purposes of perpetuating the organization per se (Levitsky,
2003: 16).
The second definition is Levitsky’s concept of routinization.
Levitsky has different
definitions of institutionalization according to Huntington’s concept.
He cites the
concept from Krasner, North, and Knight and claims that institutionalization is the
internal routinization of rules and procedure of an organization.
The rule and the
procedure of an organization should be widely known and accepted in a society.
(Ibid.,16-18)
As Angelo Panebianco defined, “Institutionalization is the process by which an
organization incorporates its founders’ values and aims.”
From the ostensible
description, it is quite similar to Huntington’s meaning.
However, there are two main
dimensions in his definition of institutionalization: the organization’s degree of autonomy
and its degree of systemicity (Panebianco, 1988:55-56).
These two dimensions are
more like routinzation rather than value infusion.
He seems to combine the concept of
value infusion with routinzation in his definition.
The last definition is related to the electoral stability in which Mainwaring applies in
his research of the party systems in Latin American democracies.
He makes an
Convention