Resumo

NOHLEN, Dieter. El contexto en el análisis politológico. Intersticios sociales [online]. 2011, n.2. ISSN 2007-4964.

This article talks about the relevance of the context for the polytologic analysis: it analyses the form in which political science approaches in its researches the presence and influence of context and then it transfers its analysis to the scope of institutional design. For the first aspect it analyses dichotomously the presence of context in different epistemological views: understand versus explain, deduction versus induction, historic versus systematic, normative versus empirical, analytical versus systemic. For the second it studies two positions that are related in a different way with the context: one normative-abstract and another historical-empirical. The first one postulates a) there is a best system theoretically recognizable; b) it may be defined according to ideal-functional imperatives; c) the structures have functional effects that to a great extent are predictable; and d) they are presented in a form relatively independent from the context, which e) facilitates the geographical transplant of those institutional deals. The second postulates that: a) there is not a best system, therefore there isn’t any institutional solution that is generalizable; b) even when there was a best system, there is no way to impose an institutional solution, because the institutions are the result of decision making processes in which values in conflict intervene; c) the functioning mode of the political institutions depends not only on their respective structures but, to a great extent, on other institutions and contextual factors as well d) This complicates the geographical transplant, provided that each country expects from the institutions different results; and e) the institutions cannot be linked automatically and regularly to determined functions.

Palavras-chave : Context; focus; institutional design; normative-abstract; historical- empirical.