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This section describes methods of institutional analysis. Criteria for selecting a given method are given in the Pathfinder's decison tree for institutional analytical tasks.

Table 3-12: Institution-analytical methods.

Method type	Governance description	Governance emergence		Governance design
Task	Identifying the relevant actors and institutions for adaptation	Explaining the emergence of governance systems which enables adaptation		Identifying policies that insure goals are not negatively affected due to climate change.
Sub-type		Understanding cases	Generalising design principles	Policy screening	Policy proofing
Characteristics of AS	Climate change impacts, adaptation and vulnerability are a result of many actors interacting and making many interrelated decisions.			Climate change risks for policy goals are not known.	Climate change risks for policy goals are known.
Theoretical assumptions		Attributing an outcome to an institution is only possible on a case by case basis.	It is difficult to attribute outcomes to a particular institution.	There is a direct predictable relationship between policies and outcomes.
Steps taken	Identify actors and institutions	Select potential  explanatory variables based on literature Collect data Apply of cause- effect reasoning		Identify relevant institutions and actors Document analysis and interviews with actors on policy development Analyse impacts of climate change on policy goals
Results	Description of institutions and actors relevant for adaptation.	Recommendations on a case by case basis.	Design principles to be contextualised in a given case.	Identified climate risks and opportunities for policy goals.	Identified opportunities for improved policy.
Example cases	Tol and Klein (2008) review the institutional context for adaptation in coastal zone management in Europe. They identify three levels of decisionmaking: national governments, local governments and private individuals. The EU regulates certain areas in Coastal Bathing Water Directive and nature, through the Habitat Directive. National governments are at different states of awareness regarding coastal management, different states of urgency.	Pelling et al. (2008) address the question of which social and institutional factors have led to the emergence of informal networks in public organisations. Active informal networks are assumed to be beneficial for adaptation. They look at integrated environmental policy making across different sectors in Wales. They find evidence for factors which have promoted the emergence of the shadow network, such as the promotion of the "Team Wales" identity, and the tendency for long careers with little out migration fostering long-term relationships.	Ostrom (1999) addresses the question of which variables lead to the selforganisation of communities for the managemen t of natural resources. A framework taking an action situation as the unit of analysis describes the governance system in order to synthesise lessons from a large number of cases. 8 design principles are found to promote self- organisation.	Klein et al. (2007) develop a method for mainstreaming climate adaptation concerns into development organisations. The study conducted interviews and examined project documents for several prominent aid organisations, considering the extent to which climate change has been taken into account in the policy and project planning stages.	Dasgupta and Baschieri (2010) analyse poverty reduction strategies and climate impacts on the rural poor in Ghana. They find that rural poverty reduction strategies do not account for climate impacts, and focus on moneymetric indicators of poverty. They find that mainstreaming climate change into development strategies, which would mean including broader indicators of poverty, is necessary to protect poverty reduction goals.
Issues involved			The ratio between the number of relevant variables and the number of cases is often too high to derive statistically significant results.