In this account, I discuss my own personal journey and the efforts of many of us associated with the Workshop in Political Theory and Policy Analysis at Indiana University to develop better analyses of how institutions affect behavior and outcomes in diverse settings. First, I reflect on my experience as a young student and in my early career, primarily to encourage those who face obstacles. Then, I discuss our institutional analysis and our research on urban governance and common-pool resources, which helped me to develop more general frameworks for the analysis of complex systems over time. The frameworks have enabled us to dig into and analyze system structure, behavior, and outcomes to make and test coherent predictions and build better theory. Last, I share some ideas concerning future scholarly directions.
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