Keys to problematize the concept of institutionalization in disciplinary studies a critical Review of David Altman’s conceptual proposal

Abstract

This article proposes a critical view on, what is now conventional, the political science history in Latin America (Bulcourf et al., 2015; Leyva, 2013; Altman, 2005 among others). We problematize the direction that disciplinary studies has been taking in the region, manly influenced by the concept of “institutionalization”. This article states that the institutionalization concept suffers of two big problems to give account of the trajectories of regional political science: first, it does fall in what Sartori (1970) has called the “concept enlargement”; second, the concept forgets about the social complexity and the contextual root of disciplines. We concluded that thinking in a situated development of political science can contribute to the comprehension of regional discipline and to build a discipline transformation coherent with the needs of our countries and region.