How Social Institutions Can Imitate Nature

This anthology consists of a collection of articles that address two common questions: how institutions emerge from individual actions and how individual actions are shaped by institutions? What unifies these contributions is the search of a theoretical explanation that overcomes the shortcomings of the rational choice explanations of social institutions. The approach developed here deals with two methodological problems that are pervasive in social sciences: that of the relationship between agency and structures and that of role of rationality and norms in explaining individual social behavior. Individuals are seen to be acting according to "conventions" that structure their interaction and that are cognitive and interpretative schemes that allow them to understand social reality and to give meaning to their actions. In addition individuals do not act either rationally or normatively but are conceived as acting within a "conventional" context that gives meaning to their action but also constrains them. They are supposed to be moved both by normative considerations and by self-interest that can conflict.

Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour, 2008

This paper clarifies the terms "institutions" and "social structures" and related terms "rules", "conventions", "norms", "values" and "customs". Part one explores the similarities between institutions and social structures whilst the second and third parts explore differences. Part two considers institutions, rules, habits or habitus and habituation, whilst part three critically reflects on three common conceptions of social structures. The conclusion comments upon reflexive deliberation via the internal conversation. 2 The term "institution" is often used to refer to things like: gender, money, the family, religion, property, markets, the state, education, sport and medicine, language, law, systems of weights and measures and table manners. This ignores important differences in the nature of these things. The institution of money, for example, does not contain human beings, whereas the institution of the family clearly does. Are money and families different kinds of institution, or is one of them not really an institution at all? For Schmid (1994: 3-5) "early retirement, further education, retraining and regulation of working hours, trade unions, labour and social security laws, labour market programs, codetermination and collective bargaining" are all institutions. The problem here is that the term "institution" becomes a "catch all" term to refer to all kinds of social phenomena. Portes (2005) refers to this as the "institutions are everything approach". The term "social structure" is also used in many ways and, as Porpora (2007: 195) notes: "there continues to be a certain blurriness in the way we speak of social structure". The term can be used negatively, to refer to phenomena like "rules, relations, positions, processes, systems, values, meanings and the like that do not reduce to human behaviour" (Lawson 2003: 181, emphasis added). But because there are many things that do not reduce to human behaviour, this meaning is impractically broad. Moreover, even if social structures and institutions are irreducible to human behaviour, this tells us nothing of the differences between them. In a similar vein, and by emphasising the first word of the pair, "social structure" can be used to refer to anything that is the result of human action, as opposed to some naturally occurring phenomenon, once again making the meaning impractically broad. The term "social structure" can be used in an "architectural" sense where we refer to the structure of a bridge, market, industry or organisation; or to the way a bridge, market, industry or organisation is structured. It can be used to refer to specific phenomenon like the structure of social class or gender; or to general phenomena, where it acts as a place-holder for a series of un-named "structural" phenomena. It can also be used to refer to society as a whole, or perhaps in a general sense to mean anything that is external to an organisation or an individual which, once again, makes the meaning impractically broad. Incidentally, my argument is not that all of these ways of using the term are exactly wrong; it is that there is simply far too much ambiguity. Finally, discussion of social structures and institutions, often involves the use of terms like habits, habitus, rules, conventions, norms, values, roles, customs, laws, regulations, practices, routines, procedures and precedents, not to mention less commonly used terms like mores, scripts, obligations, rituals, codes and agreements. Once again, there is often confusion about what each of these terms mean, how they relate to one another, and how they relate to social structures and institutions. Consider two examples. In considering "habits, routines, social conventions, social norms" as types of rules, (1999: 92) conflates properties that should be associated with human agency, (i.e. habits) with properties that should be associated with institutions (i.e. conventions and norms). He also makes the

Having pioneered the concept in economics that institutions structure incentives, Douglass North's later work posed the question, in turn: what structures institutions? His approach explored the role of culture, norms, and ideas and eventually drew its focus on shared mental models as the basis of institutions. An ongoing literature takes up North's fundamental question. In this paper, we contribute to this literature by bringing together North's mental-models approach and the work of philosopher John Searle. Searle pioneered the concept in philosophy that institutions are constitutive rules, established through collective assignment of particular status to objects in the world. Drawing upon cognitive science research on knowledge, learning, and habituation, as well as computer science research on artificial intelligence, we develop Searle's framework to pose a simple yet general account of the cognitive origins of institutions and the implications of this link for social theory. Our framework reconciles the social science approach to institutions as regulative rules with the philosophy approach to institutions as constitutive rules. It also provides a basis for considering impediments to social interaction that arise when individuals possess conflicting normative ideas and affiliate into groups whose shared understandings appear to conflict. Acknowledgments: This paper has been prepared for an edited volume celebrating the contributions of Douglass North. We thank the editor, Andrés Marroquín, and the publisher, Universidad Francisco Marroquín, for the opportunity to contribute to this volume. Sections of this paper are based on our joint ongoing work, including López and Caton (2018) and Caton and López (2018). The usual caveat applies.

Journal of Institutional Economics

Most standard social science accounts only offer limited explanations of institutional design, i.e. why institutions have common features observed in many different human groups. Here we suggest that these features are best explained as the outcome of evolved human cognition, in such domains as mating, moral judgment and social exchange. As empirical illustrations, we show how this evolved psychology makes marriage systems, legal norms and commons management systems intuitively obvious and compelling, thereby ensuring their occurrence and cultural stability. We extend this to propose under what conditions institutions can become 'natural', compelling and legitimate, and outline probable paths for institutional change given human cognitive dispositions. Explaining institutions in terms of these exogenous factors also suggests that a general theory of institutions as such is neither necessary nor in fact possible. What are required are domain-specific accounts of institutional design in different domains of evolved cognition.