Where Is Institutional History Heading? A Survey of Recent Literature (2018-2023)

Abstract

Drafting a comprehensive survey of recent literature in any given disciplinary field is always a daunting task, especially since academic globalisation, the prevalence of English as the lingua franca in scientific-academic contexts, and the increasing digitization of scholarly content have provided access to an almost unlimited number of works published in all four corners of the world. To these general difficulties, the specific case of institutional history adds its own set of problems. They all essentially revolve around one question: what exactly is institutional history? Which, of course, boils down to finding a satisfactory definition of its particular object, i.e., institutions. For this survey, I have chosen to concentrate on new books, published in the last five years, and to confine myself to Western—and specifically English, French, German, Italian, and Spanish—scholarship. Keywords: History of Institutions, Institutional History, Institution (Definition of), Methods of Historiography, Literature Survey