Hans Keman Free University, Amsterdam, Netherlands, Free University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands

As I had set out in my application my activities would be twofold: one, participating in and sharing the burden of the work-in-progress of the research activities of the theme group; secondly, I aimed at developing a fresh approach to 'political institutionalism', by elaborating 'rational choice' as a fundamental part of this, both theoretically and empirically.This has resulted in an edited book (with two chapters by me), another chapter in a book, and two articles published in international journals. In addition I presented my ideas in a lecture at NIAS on 21 March 1996 and shall present a paper in which the rational institutionalist approach is applied empirically in Geneva on 12 July 1996.
Also other - and to some extent related - work has been done:

writing two of the three chapters for a book on the "Methodology of Comparative Research in Political Science" together with P.J.M. Pennings en J. Kleinnijenhuis of the Free University, Amsterdam (the input of M. McDonald has been instrumental here);

preparing an article for Acta Politica (together with I. Budge), working title: "How different is Dutch democracy?", which will be finished this summer and is based on part of the analyses done under the auspices of the theme group;

presenting two papers at international conferences: ECPR in Oslo (Easter 1996) and UNESCO (23-25 May 1996) which can be considered a (partial) offspring of my research at NIAS.