Since the end of the 18th century natural scientists, most notably of all Charles Darwin, have explained the variety of species living on earth by an evolutionary mechanism. Darwin’s work inspired evolutionary models in diverse fields of study such as sociobiology, evolutionary epistemology, population ecology, evolutionary economics or meme theory. However, up until recently the theorems and concepts of evolution have not played any significant role in political theory, the study of political institutions or political science as a whole. When political scientists talked about evolution, they usually meant non-specific change in small increments; evolution as opposed to revolution. Evolutionary institutionalism seeks to go beyond that. Evolutionary institutionalism sees the variety of political institutions as the result of long processes much like those that produced nature’s manifold beings. Evolutionary institutionalism seeks to explain exactly how institutions evolve, what patterns they exhibit, which internal and external selection criteria are used and how institutions fit into their respective niches. Many areas of institutional research will profit from such an EI approach. Institutional reforms can be evaluated in terms of how they influence institutional fitness, comparative studies of institutions such as parliaments will be enriched by morphological concepts and attempts at state building in weak or failing states can be saved from naïve constructivism by highlighting the institution-environment interaction and dependencies.
