Institutions are structures and mechanisms of social order and cooperation governing the behavior of a set of individuals. Social structure is a term frequently used in Sociology and Social theory — yet rarely defined or clearly conceptualised (Abercrombie et al In Sociology a mechanism is a set of rules designed to bring about a certain Outcome through the Interaction of a number of agents Social order is a concept used in sociology history and other social sciences Distinguish from Corporation. Cooperation, co-operation, or coöperation is the process of working or acting together Behavior or behaviour (see spelling differences) refers to the actions or Reactions of an object or Organism, usually As commonly used, individual refers to a Person or to any specific object in a collection Institutions are identified with a social purpose and permanence, transcending individual human lives and intentions, and with the making and enforcing of rules governing cooperative human behavior. Within the context of law social purpose is a scheme of Statutory construction declaring that a statute should not be construed in a way that would violate normal societal values Human beings, humans or man (Origin 1590–1600 L homō man OL hemō the earthly one (see Humus The term, institution, is commonly applied to customs and behavior patterns important to a society, as well as to particular formal organizations of government and public service. A society is a Population of Humans characterized by patterns of relationships between individuals that share a distinctive Culture and Institutions For the government of parliamentary systems see Executive (government. Public services is a term usually used to mean services provided by Government to its Citizens, either directly (through the Public sector) or As structures and mechanisms of social order among humans, institutions are one of the principal objects of study in the social sciences, including sociology, political science and economics. The social sciences comprise academic disciplines concerned with the study of the social life of human groups and individuals including Anthropology, Communication studies Sociology (from Latin: socius "companion" and the suffix -ology "the study of" from Greek λόγος lógos "knowledge" Political science is a branch of Social sciences that deals with the theory and practice of Politics and the description and analysis of Political systems Economics is the social science that studies the production distribution, and consumption of goods and services. Institutions are a central concern for law, the formal regime for political rule-making and enforcement. Law is a system of rules enforced through a set of Institutions used as an instrument to underpin civil obedience politics economics and society The creation and evolution of institutions is a primary topic for history. History is the study of the past particularly the written record Those who study history as a Profession are called Historians Etymology

Aspects of Institutions

Although unindividual, formal organizations, commonly identified as "institutions," may be deliberately and intentionally created by people, the development and functioning of institutions in society in general may be regarded as an instance of emergence; that is, institutions arise, develop and function in a pattern of social self-organization, which goes beyond the conscious intentions of the individual humans involved. For other uses see Emergence (disambiguation, Emergent, and Emergency.

As mechanisms of social cooperation, institutions are manifest in both objectively real, formal organizations, such as the U.S. Congress, or the Roman Catholic Church, and, also, in informal social order and organization, reflecting human psychology, culture, habits and customs. The United States Congress is the bicameral Legislature of the federal government of the United States of America, consisting of two houses Most important institutions, considered abstractly, have both objective and subjective aspects: examples include money and marriage. Money is anything that is generally accepted as Payment for Goods and services and repayment of Debts. NOTICE TO WOULD-BE ROMEOS ************** The institution of money encompasses many formal organizations, including banks and government treasury departments and stock exchanges, which may be termed, "institutions," as well as subjective experiences, which guide people in their pursuit of personal well-being. Powerful institutions are able to imbue a paper currency with certain value, and to induce millions into cooperative production and trade in pursuit of economic ends abstractly denominated in that currency's units. The subjective experience of money is so pervasive and persuasive that economists talk of the "money illusion" and try to disabuse their students of it, in preparation for learning economic analysis. Money illusion refers to the tendency of people to think of currency in nominal rather than real, terms

Marriage and family, as a set of institutions, also encompass formal and informal, objective and subjective aspects. NOTICE TO WOULD-BE ROMEOS ************** Family denotes a group of People affiliated by consanguinity affinity or co-residence Both governments and religious institutions make and enforce rules and laws regarding marriage and family, create and regulate various concepts of how people relate to one another, and what their rights, obligations and duties may be as a consequence. Culture and custom permeate marriage and family. In the United States and western Europe, a transition from a conception of marriage, as license for sexual intercourse granted by Church and State, to a conception of marriage as a form of contract, freely entered into, has occasioned momentous social and political controversies regarding laws and customs governing the freedom of women, divorce, cohabitation outside marriage, contraception, and homosexuality.

Examples of recently emerging institutions may include many Web 2.0 socially based internet activities, such as open source software or free software, and wikipedia itself. Web 20 is a term describing changing trends in the use of World Wide Web technology and Web design that aims to enhance Creativity, secure Open source software (OSS began as a marketing campaign for Free software. Free software or software libre is Software that can be used studied and modified without restriction and which can be copied and redistributed in modified or unmodified ***************************************************************************************** * *

Gilles Deleuze compared emergent institutions with legal codes, such that,

. Gilles Deleuze ( (January 18 1925 &ndash November 4 1995 was a French philosopher of the late 20th century . . tyranny is a regime in which there are many laws and few institutions; democracy is a regime in which there are many institutions, and few laws. Oppression becomes apparent when laws bear directly on people, and not on the prior institutions that protect them. ^[1]

Perspectives of the Social Sciences

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. A social construction or social construct is any phenomenon "invented" or "constructed" by participants in a particular Culture or Society A cultural artifact is a human-made object which gives information about the Culture of its creator and users

The relationship of 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". Adam Smith ( baptised 16 June 1723 – 17 July 1790) was a Scottish moral philosopher and a pioneer of Political economy. Modern feminists have criticized traditional marriage and other institutions as elements of an oppressive and obsolete patriarchy. Feminism is a discourse that involves various movements theories, and Philosophies which are concerned with the issue of Gender difference, advocate Patriarchy is the structuring of Society on the basis of Family units where fathers have primary responsibility for the welfare of hence authority over The Marxist view which sees human nature as historically 'evolving' towards voluntary social cooperation, shared by some anarchists, is that supraindividual institutions such as the market and the state are incompatible with the individual liberty which would obtain in a truly free society. Dialectical materialism, according to many followers of Karl Marx 's thinking is the philosophical basis of Marxism. Anarchism is a Political philosophy encompassing theories and attitudes which support the elimination of all compulsory Government, i

Economics, in recent years, has used game theory to study institutions from two perspectives. Game theory is a branch of Applied mathematics that is used in the Social sciences (most notably Economics) Biology, Engineering, Firstly, how do institutions survive and evolve? In this perspective, institutions arise from Nash equilibria of games. In Game theory, the Nash equilibrium (named after John Forbes Nash, who proposed it is a Solution concept of a game involving two or more players in which 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. For example, the Cournot duopoly model is based on an institution involving an auctioneer who sells all goods at the market-clearing price. Cournot competition is an Economic model used to describe an industry structure in which companies compete on the amount of output they will produce which they decide on independently While it is always possible to analyse 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. Political science is a branch of Social sciences that deals with the theory and practice of Politics and the description and analysis of Political systems A meme (miːm consists of any idea or behavior that can pass from one person to another by learning or imitation 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. Memetic institutionalism is a term created by Mikael Sandberg in Social Capital and Democratisation

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 outcomes are likely to be, given a particular political decision-making process and context. Public choice in economic theory is the use of modern Economic tools to study problems that are traditionally in the province of Political science.

Sociology traditionally analyzed social institutions in terms of interlocking social roles and expectations. A role (sometimes spelled rôle) or a social role is a set of connected Behaviors Rights and Obligations as conceptualized by actors 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.

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. Feudalism, a term first used in the early modern period (17th century in its most classic sense refers to a Medieval Europe Political system composed The term modern period or modern era (sometimes also modern times) is the period of history that followed the Middle Ages between c

Notes

References

• 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 9780521671347
• 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.

See also

• Actor analysis
• Nation, country, state
• Effect on individuals institutionalisation
• General staff
• Historical institutionalism
• Institute
• Institutional economics
• Social construction
• Social institution

External links

• International Society for New Institutional Economics
• Institutional reform