Abstract

This article revises the theory of legislative institutionalization, which emerged in political science to analyze historical trends in the U.S. Congress. It singles out Polsby’s “The Institutionalization of the U.S. House” as the starting point of this theory and maintains that this theory takes aim at understanding the historical development of legislatures, besides highlighting issues of governance, authority building, and differentiation from the environment. After reviewing the observations and criticisms raised by the theory, this article provides an analytical framework to study the institutionalization of national, democratic legislatures, based upon a traditional process-oriented concept of legislative institutionalization. This framework draws from theoretical contributions made by institutional sociologists and both presidential and legislative researchers, all of which are brought together to understand the process that presides over the institutionalization of a legislature. Finally, this article suggests the existence of a link among the dimensions of the institutionalization process, the institutional design of a legislature, and the exchanges between the legislature and the environment.