ABSTRACT
The original idea in the comparative administration and policy movements was to create a framework whereby, through university education and research, new generations of scholars and practitioners. The result of these movements in their heyday was "separate tables" called comparative public administration and comparative public policy, at the margins of public administration and policy and closer to political analysis. As Eleanor Ostrom noted in her 1995 book review essay, the new institutionalism, with its focus on institutional analysis and development in political science, is one of those overarching perspectives, like formal theory and rational choice, that has the ability to cut across the discipline. On the policy side in political science, the transition from Ostrom's "separate tables" can best be captured by looking first at the work of Theda Skocpol and those who adopt a historical, institutional approach to the study of politics by bringing the state back into comparative analysis.
