Criticism of the institutional approach in comparative political analysis has come up in successive waves. Comment. (Answer in 150 words)

- Criticism of the institutional approach in comparative political analysis has come up in successive waves. Comment. (Answer in 150 words)
Introduction
The institutional approach has been attacked not once but in successive waves, each faulting a different weakness. The cumulative effect has been to reform it, not to retire it.

Body
1. The behavioural wave: Almond and Coleman (1960) and Almond and Verba's The Civic Culture (1963) faulted old institutionalism as formal-legal, descriptive and Eurocentric: constitutions studied while political culture went unexamined.
2. The political-economy wave: Marxists such as Miliband and Poulantzas, and dependency writers like Frank and Cardoso, argued that comparing constitutions conceals the class structure and world market that decide what institutions can do.
3. The rational-choice wave: even after March and Olsen's new institutionalism (1984), critics found institutions endogenous to the interests they explain; Hall and Taylor (1996) found three rival institutionalisms disagreeing among themselves.
4. The post-colonial wave: Mamdani's Citizen and Subject (1996) and Helmke and Levitsky on informal institutions showed transplanted forms working quite differently outside the West.

Conclusion
The criticism has been corrective, not fatal. Institutions returned as one variable among several — a stronger position than being the whole subject.