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Abstract Over the last decade, there has been increased interest in understanding the design (i.e., content) of regulation as a basis for studying regulation formation, implementation, and outcomes. Within this line of research, scholars have been particularly interested in investigating regulatory dynamics relating to features and patterns of regulatory text and have engaged a variety of methodological approaches to support their assessments. One approach featured in this research is the Institutional Grammar (IG). The IG supports syntactic and semantic analyses of institutional statements (e.g., regulatory provisions) that embed within regulatory text. A recently revised version—called the IG 2.0—further supports robust analyses of regulatory text by offering an expanded feature set particularly well‐suited to extracting and classifying content relevant for the study of regulation. This paper (i) provides a brief introduction to the IG 2.0 and (ii) discusses theoretical and analytical advantages of using the IG 2.0 to study regulation. 

The Institutional Grammar (IG) is used to analyze the syntactic structure of statements constituting institutions (e.g., public policy and social norms) that indicate behavioral constraints. Significant progress has been made in methodologically developing the IG in recent years. Scholars have offered increasingly clear guidelines for IG-based coding, identified unique considerations for applying the IG to different types of institutions, and even expanded its syntactic scope. However, while validated as a robust institutional analysis approach, the resource and time commitment associated with its application has precipitated concerns over whether the IG might ever enjoy widespread use. Needed now in the methodological development of the IG are reliable and accessible (i.e., open source) approaches that reduce the costs associated with its application. We propose an automated approach leveraging computational text analysis and natural language processing. We then present results from an evaluation in the context of food system regulations. 

Abstract Public affairs scholars have contributed rich insights on the role and outcomes of institutions in policy and administrative settings. They have offered numerous empirical studies of these topics, alongside concepts and theories that can be leveraged in their assessment. But there remains a relative dearth in attention to approaches that can be used to support rigorous assessments of institutional design itself—those that support reliable and nuanced representations of institutional structure and meaning. The Institutional Grammar (IG) is one such approach that has gained in prominence over the last decade. Existing applications validate the IG's utility toward rigorous assessments of institutional design, and highlight the IG's value in operationalizing concepts relevant in policy and administration scholarship. We build on existing IG research by presenting a revised specification IG 2.0 for encoding and analyzing institutional design that responds to representational necessities and analytical opportunities within and beyond policy and administrative domains.