Planning for Institutional Change in a Complex Environment: An Approach and an Application

An important part of the institutionalist tradition in economics has been the call for a type of planning that emphasizes the continual design and redesign of the structural framework of social and economic systems. This requires 2 things, a value principal and an analytical technique. Much of the institutionalist literature focuses either on the instrumental value principle or on a descriptive analysis of institutional change that has already occurred. The adaptation of a ''futures oriented'' technique for the type of planning that interests institutionalists is suggested. It is not particularly important whether this specific technique is correct for all planning purposes. What is important is that institutionalists begin to consider these types of analytical tools and their potential application to a more instrumentally reasoned process of structural change.