The normative and operational core of an institutional approach based on the works of Nancy Fraser and Mangabeira Unger

Abstract

The wish for institutional reform occupies much of the debate about public space in our time. This clamor manifests itself in a variety of forms, whether in the theory of justice, in debates about ethnic and gender relations, or in how to overcome the stagnation of the current form of social democracy, or even in those about redistribution and recognition. At the same time, the criticism of the neoinstitutionalist approach to the organizational and institutional forms we have today is also continuously present. In this context, the present paper aims to suggest that we can relate dissatisfaction with current institutional forms, with a criticism of the theory that informs the institutional reforms developed in the last decades. Finally, presenting the argument that a new institutionalist approach is necessary.