Knowledge Tree
Institutional Grammar
Also known as: IG, Institutional Grammar framework, Institutional Grammar, Institutional Grammar (IG)
Facts (22)
Sources
Patterns in the Transition From Founder-Leadership to Community ... arxiv.org Feb 5, 2026 12 facts
claimIn the Institutional Grammar framework, an 'Object' represents the grammatical object of a rule, which can be another actor or a resource subject to the action enacted by the statement's role.
referenceInstitutional statements within the Institutional Grammar framework consist of four linked components: Role (Attribute), Action (Aim), Deontic, and Object.
claimIn the Institutional Grammar framework, a 'Deontic' captures the prescriptive force of an institutional statement using modal verbs like 'may,' 'should,' or 'must' to indicate if an action is permitted, recommended, or required, or 'can' and 'cannot' for enabling or restricting actions.
referenceThe basic unit of the institutional grammar framework is the "institutional statement," which is typically a sentence of policy text that functions as a rule, norm, or piece of institutionally relevant advice.
claimThe Institutional Grammar framework treats an institution as an unordered collection, or 'bag,' of institutional statements.
claimIn the institutional statement 'The technical committee must ratify the development roadmap,' the Institutional Grammar framework identifies the Role as 'technical committee,' the Action as 'ratify,' the Object as 'roadmap,' and the Deontic as 'must,' which indicates the statement is obligatory.
referenceThe Institutional Grammar (IG) framework, developed by Ostrom (2009) and Crawford and Ostrom (1995), is used to extract governance structures from GOVERNANCE.md constitution files in GitHub projects.
referenceThe article 'Machine coding of policy texts with the institutional grammar' was published in Public Administration, volume 99, issue 2, pages 248–262.
claimThe researchers excluded the 'Objects' construct of the institutional grammar from their findings due to difficulties in extracting, categorizing, and interpreting the data.
claimIn the Institutional Grammar framework, an 'Action' (or 'Aim') identifies activities recognized by the institution as requiring governance, such as 'commit,' 'assign,' or 'review,' and functions syntactically as the verb.
claimIn the Institutional Grammar framework, a 'Role' (or 'Attribute') represents the grammatical subject of an institutional statement and identifies the type of actor or position recognized by the institution, such as a 'project lead' or 'contributor.'
referenceThe institutional grammar is a linguistic approach to policy analysis developed by Sue Crawford and Elinor Ostrom to formally represent resource management institutions based on their written or spoken rules.
Governance in Practice: How Open Source Projects Define ... - arXiv arxiv.org 5 days ago 10 facts
procedureThe authors of 'Governance in Practice: How Open Source Projects Define and Document Roles' analyzed governance as an institutional infrastructure by using Institutional Grammar to extract and formalize role definitions from GOVERNANCE.md files in GitHub repositories.
procedureThe authors of 'Governance in Practice: How Open Source Projects Define...' adapted Institutional Grammar (IG) into a lightweight, role-centric interpretation for software projects, operationalizing it into four dimensions: scope, privileges, obligations, and promotion/demotion criteria.
referenceThe Institutional Grammar schema decomposes governance roles into four components: scope, privileges, obligations, and promotion/demotion criteria.
claimThe authors of the study 'Governance in Practice: How Open Source Projects Define...' chose the Institutional Grammar structure over matrix-style responsibility models because it enables comparability across projects and aligns with rule-based representations of authority.
procedureInstitutional Grammar (IG) decomposes institutional statements into five syntactic components: Attribute (actor), Deontic (permission, obligation, or prohibition), Aim/Object (action), Conditions (context), and Or-else (sanction).
procedureThe authors analyze a sample of GitHub repositories by identifying governance files and extracting documented roles into a structured representation grounded in Institutional Grammar (IG).
referenceInstitutional Grammar (IG) is a framework that conceptualizes institutions as systems of statements specifying who may or must do what, under which conditions, and with what consequences, as defined by Crawford and Ostrom (1995).
referenceThe researchers utilized the Institutional Grammar framework (developed by Crawford and Ostrom, 1995; Siddiki et al., 2011; Sen et al., 2022) to decompose institutional statements into components: Attribute (actor/role), Deontic (normative modality), Aim/Object (activity), Conditions (circumstances), and Or-else (sanctions).
claimThe authors of the study 'Governance in Practice: How Open Source Projects Define...' adopted a governance role schema inspired by Institutional Grammar, as defined by Crawford and Ostrom (1995), Siddiki et al. (2011), and Sen et al. (2022).
procedureThe authors of 'Governance in Practice: How Open Source Projects Define ...' utilize a role-centric analytical lens grounded in Institutional Grammar to decompose governance rules into scopes, privileges, obligations, and transition criteria.