As IG scholarship continues to flourish, an enduring trend is to explore the use of the IG in the measurement of concepts linked to various models, theories, and frameworks, often drawing on the assessment of features of institutional design. Researchers are continuing to explore the value of IG-based measurement of such concepts, relative to extant approaches. They are additionally exploring whether IG-based conceptual measurement supports, advances, or otherwise modifies understanding of phenomena that specific models, theories, and frameworks are designed to address. In doing so, such work is intended to support the development and testing of existing and novel models, theories, and frameworks that can be applied to evaluate the governance of social systems. Researchers engaged in work relating to this theme are drawing on approaches and methods rooted in and cross-cutting different disciplines. Some are also particularly interested in using the IG toward the study of institutional diversity within and across cases. Comparative assessments of institutional diversity further enable the testing and development of models, theories, and frameworks used to understand governance.

A growing trend in the use of the IG for behavioral studies is connecting the traditionally dominant use of the IG for the analysis of institutions-in-form with institutions-in-use. A particular focus of this theme is to leverage insight into the nature of institutions in behavioral settings, working toward establishing a rich empirical basis of the processes by which institutions come about (emerge), change, and evolve, as well as their interplay with institutions-in-form. 

Methodologically, behavioral IG studies target physical, digital, as well as artificial and engineered social systems, exploring present institutional arrangements, their emergence as well as their underlying dynamics by means of surveys and questionnaires, experimental settings, or by drawing on generative methods, such as simulating artificial societies. Where the former emphasize the understanding and explanation of institutional phenomena in real world settings, the latter enable alternative methods to perform feasibility, or to test theory and hypotheses whose exploration might otherwise be challenging (e.g., on economic grounds) or prohibitive (e.g., on ethical grounds). 

Efforts under this theme include the development of the cognitive infrastructure capable of representing complex cognitive processes necessary to study institutions. Contemporary studies that focus on behavior draw on a range of approaches rooted in different disciplinary traditions (e.g., ethnographic research, utilitarian models). In concert with exploring behavior, this theme promotes progress toward developing the cognitive infrastructure (e.g., psychologically inspired cognitive models) that enables social behavior, and leverage novel opportunities to study and analyze institutions (e.g., by affording disciplinary integration).

There remains a paucity of information on the current institutional design and structure of most governance instruments. Efforts under this theme encompass institutional analyses that are comparative/non-comparative and/or assess single/meta case studies that explore the following broad institutional performance issues: coding and comparing the structure and configurations of a variety of institutions to determine which institutional characteristics may foster or hinder the interplay among rules-in-form and rules-in-use, including exploring the relationship among institutional design, implementation/operationalization, conformance, and desired outcomes of key environmental and social policies, among other information. 

Research under this theme also explores institutional performance within institutions over time to better understand how social and environmental change may motivate institutional change and performance.

One of the goals of researchers exploring this theme is the development of a library of open access coded policies and legislation and their translation into policy briefs that are useful to researchers and practitioners interested in policy performance, implementation, and design.

While application of the IG has increased significantly in the past decade, its broader application and usefulness may be improved through the rigorous development of qualitative, quantitative, experimental, computational, mixed and other methods that lend themselves to answering particular research questions. Research under this theme will work towards advancing knowledge and application of methods designed to aid in the analysis of IG-coded data. Researchers working under this theme are interested in showcasing novel methodological approaches, augmenting existing approaches, or developing IG coding guidelines for the coding of formal institutions sourced from policy documents, or informal institutions gleaned from surveys, interview transcripts, and other sources.

Complementing the methodological efforts, this theme captures advances aimed at automating the IG research process, whether focusing on specific stages, or the process in its entirety. These aspects include the collection or generation of data, their pre-processing, the facilitation of their analysis as well as interpretation of outcomes based on computational approaches. Efforts in this area variably focus on a) supporting specific methodological and disciplinary pathways (e.g., automated statistical processing, computational models), b) exploring novel or improving existing technology more broadly applicable to IG studies (e.g., machine learning, natural language processing), or c) developing purpose-built software and technological infrastructure that supports the research process (e.g., IG data management, high-performance processing for large-scale analyses). Specifically, this theme targets scholars and practitioners with technological backgrounds or interest therein.