Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Series editors' preface
- Preface
- CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION
- CHAPTER 2 THE PRIMARY IMPORTANCE OF DISTRIBUTIONAL CONFLICT
- CHAPTER 3 INSTITUTIONS AND STRATEGIC CHOICE: INFORMATION, SANCTIONS, AND SOCIAL EXPECTATIONS
- CHAPTER 4 THE SPONTANEOUS EMERGENCE OF SOCIAL INSTITUTIONS: CONTEMPORARY THEORIES OF INSTITUTIONAL CHANGE
- CHAPTER 5 THE SPONTANEOUS EMERGENCE OF SOCIAL INSTITUTIONS: A BARGAINING THEORY OF EMERGENCE AND CHANGE
- CHAPTER 6 STABILITY AND CHANGE: CONFLICTS OVER FORMAL INSTITUTIONS
- CHAPTER 7 CONCLUSION
- Bibliography
- Index
Preface
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 16 September 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Series editors' preface
- Preface
- CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION
- CHAPTER 2 THE PRIMARY IMPORTANCE OF DISTRIBUTIONAL CONFLICT
- CHAPTER 3 INSTITUTIONS AND STRATEGIC CHOICE: INFORMATION, SANCTIONS, AND SOCIAL EXPECTATIONS
- CHAPTER 4 THE SPONTANEOUS EMERGENCE OF SOCIAL INSTITUTIONS: CONTEMPORARY THEORIES OF INSTITUTIONAL CHANGE
- CHAPTER 5 THE SPONTANEOUS EMERGENCE OF SOCIAL INSTITUTIONS: A BARGAINING THEORY OF EMERGENCE AND CHANGE
- CHAPTER 6 STABILITY AND CHANGE: CONFLICTS OVER FORMAL INSTITUTIONS
- CHAPTER 7 CONCLUSION
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
Institutions matter. That was the basis on which I began the research in graduate school for the dissertation on which this book is based. But how they mattered and their implications were, at that time, beyond me. I had been motivated by dissatisfaction with both sides of the micro—macro debate in the philosophy of social science. The fact that social outcomes were a product of both individual action and social structure seemed self-evident to me. All of the discussion that focused exclusively on one side or the other of this question seemed beside the point.
So I set out to learn everything I could about the different ways that social institutions were treated in the social sciences. Over time I decided that the way to explain the institutional effects on social life was to concentrate on the relationship between rational action and institutional constraints. But although I thought that the rational-choice approach offered a key to the relationship between action and structure, I was unwilling to accept what I thought to be the narrow (and wrongheaded) emphasis on collective benefits. This emphasis failed to capture many of the reasons that I thought institutions mattered. It ignored the politics inherent in social life and it limited the ways in which institutional development and change could be explained.
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- Institutions and Social Conflict , pp. xi - xviPublisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1992
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