Institution

There are a variety of definitions of institutions.[10][11] These definitions entail varying levels of formality and organizational complexity.[12][13] The most expansive definitions may include informal but regularized practices, such as handshakes, whereas the most narrow definitions may only include institutions that are highly formalized (e.g. have specified laws, rules and complex organizational structures).

According to Wolfgang Streeck and Kathleen Thelen, institutions are in the most general sense "building blocks of social order: they represent socially sanctioned, that is, collectively enforced expectations with respect to the behavior of specific categories of actors or to the performance of certain activities. Typically, they involve mutually related rights and obligations for actors."[13] Sociologists and anthropologists have expansive definitions of institutions that include informal institutions. Political scientists have sometimes defined institutions in more formal ways where third parties must reliably and predictably enforce the rules governing the transactions of first and second parties.[13]

One prominent Rational Choice Institutionalist definition of institutions is provided by Jack Knight who defines institutions as entailing "a set of rules that structure social interactions in particular ways" and that "knowledge of these rules must be shared by the members of the relevant community or society."[8] Definitions by Knight and Randall Calvert exclude purely private idiosyncrasies and conventions.[8][12]

Douglass North defines institutions as "rules of the game in a society"[14] and "humanly devised constraints that structure political, economic and social interactions."[1] Randall Calvert defines institution as "an equilibrium of behavior in an underlying game."[12] This means that "it must be rational for nearly every individual to almost always adhere to the behavior prescriptions of the institution, given that nearly all other individuals are doing so."[12]

Robert Keohane defined institutions as "persistent and connected sets of rules (formal or informal) that prescribe behavioral roles, constrain activity, and shape expectations."[7] Samuel P. Huntington defined institutions as "stable, valued, recurring patterns of behavior."[15] I

Avner Greif and David Laitin define institutions "as a system of human-made, nonphysical elements – norms, beliefs, organizations, and rules – exogenous to each individual whose behavior it influences that generates behavioral regularities."[2] Additionally, they specify that organizations "are institutional elements that influence the set of beliefs and norms that can be self-enforcing in the transaction under consideration. Rules are behavioral instructions that facilitate individuals with the cognitive task of choosing behavior by defining the situation and coordinating behavior."[2]

All definitions of institutions generally entail that there is a level of persistence and continuity.[5] Laws, rules, social conventions and norms are all examples of institutions.[6] Organizations and institutions can be synonymous, but Jack Knight writes that organizations are a narrow version of institutions or represent a cluster of institutions; the two are distinct in the sense that organizations contain internal institutions (that govern interactions between the members of the organizations).[8]

An informal institution tends to have socially shared rules, which are unwritten and yet are often known by all inhabitants of a certain country, as such they are often referred to as being an inherent part of the culture of a given country. Informal practices are often referred to as "cultural", for example clientelism or corruption is sometimes stated as a part of the political culture in a certain place, but an informal institution itself is not cultural, it may be shaped by culture or behaviour of a given political landscape, but they should be looked at in the same way as formal institutions to understand their role in a given country. The relationship between formal and informal institutions is often closely aligned and informal institutions step in to prop up inefficient institutions. However, because they do not have a centre, which directs and coordinates their actions, changing informal institutions is a slow and lengthy process.[16]

According to Geoffrey M. Hodgson, it is misleading to say that an institution is a form of behavior. Instead, Hodgson states that institutions are "integrated systems of rules that structure social interactions."[17]

Examples of institutions include:

• Family: The family is the center of the child's life. The family teaches children cultural values and attitudes about themselves and others – see sociology of the family. Children learn continuously from their environment. Children also become aware of class at a very early age and assign different values to each class accordingly.[18]
• Religion: Some religion is like an ethnic or cultural category, making it less likely for the individuals to break from religious affiliations and be more socialized in this setting. Parental religious participation is the most influential part of religious socialization—more so than religious peers or religious beliefs.[19] See sociology of religion and civil religion.
• Peer groups: A peer group is a social group whose members have interests, social positions and age in common. This is where children can escape supervision and learn to form relationships on their own. The influence of the peer group typically peaks during adolescence however peer groups generally only affect short term interests unlike the family which has long term influence.[20]
• Economic systems: Economic systems dictate "acceptable alternatives for consumption", "social values of consumption alternatives", the "establishment of dominant values", and "the nature of involvement in consumption".[21]
• Legal systems: Children are pressured from both parents and peers to conform and obey certain laws or norms of the group/community. Parents’ attitudes toward legal systems influence children's views as to what is legally acceptable.[22] For example, children whose parents are continually in jail are more accepting of incarceration. See jurisprudence, philosophy of law, sociology of law.
• Penal systems: The penal systems acts upon prisoners and the guards. Prison is a separate environment from that of normal society; prisoners and guards form their own communities and create their own social norms. Guards serve as "social control agents" who discipline and provide security.[23] From the view of the prisoners, the communities can be oppressive and domineering, causing feelings of defiance and contempt towards the guards.[23] Because of the change in societies, prisoners experience loneliness, a lack of emotional relationships, a decrease in identity and "lack of security and autonomy".[24] Both the inmates and the guards feel tense, fearful, and defensive, which creates an uneasy atmosphere within the community.[23] See sociology of punishment.
• Language: People learn to socialize differently depending on the specific language and culture in which they live.[25] A specific example of this is code switching. This is where immigrant children learn to behave in accordance with the languages used in their lives: separate languages at home and in peer groups (mainly in educational settings).[26] Depending on the language and situation at any given time, people will socialize differently.[27] See linguistics, sociolinguistics, sociology of language.
• Mass media: The mass media are the means for delivering impersonal communications directed to a vast audience. The term media comes from Latin meaning, "middle", suggesting that the media's function is to connect people. The media can teach norms and values by way of representing symbolic reward and punishment for different kinds of behavior.[28] Mass media has enormous effects on our attitudes and behavior, notably in regards to aggression.[29] See media studies.
• Educational institutions – schools (preschool, primary/elementary, secondary, and post-secondary/higher –see sociology of education)
• Research community – academia and universities; research institutes – see sociology of science
• Medicine – hospitals and other health care institutions – see sociology of health and illness, medical sociology
  • Psychiatric hospitals (history)
• Military or paramilitary forces – see military sociology
• Industry – businesses, including corporations – see financial institution, factory, capitalism, division of labour, social class, industrial sociology
• Civil society or NGOs – charitable organizations; advocacy groups; political parties; think tanks; virtual communities

In an extended context:

• Art and culture (See also: culture industry, critical theory, cultural studies, cultural sociology)
• The nation-state – Social and political scientists often speak of the state as embodying all institutions such as schools, prisons, police, and so on. However, these institutions may be considered private or autonomous, whilst organised religion and family life certainly pre-date the advent of the nation state. The Neo-Marxist thought of Antonio Gramsci, for instance, distinguishes between institutions of political society (police, the army, legal system, etc.), which dominate directly and coercively—and civil society (the family, education system, etc.).

While institutions tend to appear to people in society as part of the natural, unchanging landscape of their lives, study of institutions by the social sciences tends to reveal the nature of institutions as social constructions, artifacts of a particular time, culture and society, produced by collective human choice, though not directly by individual intention. Sociology traditionally analyzed social institutions in terms of interlocking social roles and expectations. Social institutions created and were composed of groups of roles, or expected behaviors. The social function of the institution was executed by the fulfillment of roles. Basic biological requirements, for reproduction and care of the young, are served by the institutions of marriage and family, for example, by creating, elaborating and prescribing the behaviors expected for husband/father, wife/mother, child, etc.

The relationship of the institutions to human nature is a foundational question for the social sciences. Institutions can be seen as "naturally" arising from, and conforming to, human nature—a fundamentally conservative view—or institutions can be seen as artificial, almost accidental, and in need of architectural redesign, informed by expert social analysis, to better serve human needs—a fundamentally progressive view. Adam Smith anchored his economics in the supposed human "propensity to truck, barter and exchange". Modern feminists have criticized traditional marriage and other institutions as element of an oppressive and obsolete patriarchy. The Marxist view—which sees human nature as historically 'evolving' towards voluntary social cooperation, shared by some anarchists—is that supra-individual institutions such as the market and the state are incompatible with the individual liberty of a truly free society.

Economics, in recent years, has used game theory to study institutions from two perspectives. Firstly, how do institutions survive and evolve? In this perspective, institutions arise from Nash equilibria of games. For example, whenever people pass each other in a corridor or thoroughfare, there is a need for customs, which avoid collisions. Such a custom might call for each party to keep to their own right (or left—such a choice is arbitrary, it is only necessary that the choice be uniform and consistent). Such customs may be supposed to be the origin of rules, such as the rule, adopted in many countries, which requires driving automobiles on the right side of the road.

Secondly, how do institutions affect behaviour? In this perspective, the focus is on behaviour arising from a given set of institutional rules. In these models, institutions determine the rules (i.e. strategy sets and utility functions) of games, rather than arise as equilibria out of games. Douglass North argues, the very emergence of an institution reflects behavioral adaptations through his application of increasing returns.[30] Over time institutions develop rules that incentivize certain behaviors over others because they present less risk or induce lower cost, and establish path dependent outcomes. For example, the Cournot duopoly model is based on an institution involving an auctioneer who sells all goods at the market-clearing price. While it is always possible to analyze behaviour with the institutions-as-equilibria approach instead, it is much more complicated.

In political science, the effect of institutions on behavior has also been considered from a meme perspective, like game theory borrowed from biology. A "memetic institutionalism" has been proposed, suggesting that institutions provide selection environments for political action, whereby differentiated retention arises and thereby a Darwinian evolution of institutions over time. Public choice theory, another branch of economics with a close relationship to political science, considers how government policy choices are made, and seeks to determine what the policy outputs are likely to be, given a particular political decision-making process and context. Credibility thesis purports that institutions emerge from intentional institution-building but never in the originally intended form.[31] Instead, institutional development is endogenous and spontaneously ordered and institutional persistence can be explained by their credibility,[32] which is provided by the function that particular institutions serve.

In history, a distinction between eras or periods, implies a major and fundamental change in the system of institutions governing a society. Political and military events are judged to be of historical significance to the extent that they are associated with changes in institutions. In European history, particular significance is attached to the long transition from the feudal institutions of the Middle Ages to the modern institutions, which govern contemporary life.

The term "institutionalization" is widely used in social theory to refer to the process of embedding something (for example a concept, a social role, a particular value or mode of behavior) within an organization, social system, or society as a whole. The term may also be used to refer to committing a particular individual to an institution, such as a mental institution. To this extent, "institutionalization" may carry negative connotations regarding the treatment of, and damage caused to, vulnerable human beings by the oppressive or corrupt application of inflexible systems of social, medical, or legal controls by publicly owned, private or not-for-profit organizations.

The term "institutionalization" may also be used in a political sense to apply to the creation or organization of governmental institutions or particular bodies responsible for overseeing or implementing policy, for example in the welfare or development.

• Berger, P. L. and T. Luckmann (1966), The Social Construction of Reality: A Treatise in the Sociology of Knowledge, Anchor Books, Garden City, NY.
• Chang, Ha-Joon (ed.) (2007), Institutional Change and Economic Development, Anthem Press.
• Greif, Avner (2006), Institutions and the Path to the Modern Economy: Lessons from Medieval Trade, Cambridge University Press, ISBN 978-0-521-67134-7
• North, D. C. (1990), Institutions, Institutional Change and Economic Performance. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
• Schotter, A. (1981), The Economic Theory of Social Institutions. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
• Gielen, P. (ed. 2013), Institutional Attitudes. Instituting Art in a Flat World. Valiz: Amsterdam.

• Whyte, William H., The Organization Man, Doubleday Publishing, 1956. (excerpts from Whyte's book)
• "Social Institutions," Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy