## 1. Social Institutions: An Overview



Any account of social institutions must begin by informally marking
off social institutions from other social forms. Unfortunately, as
noted above, in ordinary language the terms "institutions"
and "social institutions" are used to refer to a
miscellany of social forms, including conventions, rules, rituals,
organisations, and systems of organisations. Moreover, there are a
variety of theoretical accounts of institutions, including
sociological as well as philosophical ones. Indeed, many of these
accounts of what are referred to as institutions are not accounts of
the same phenomena; they are at best accounts of overlapping fields of
social phenomena. Nevertheless, it is possible, firstly, to mark off a
range of related social forms that would be regarded by most theorists
as being properly describable as social institutions; and, secondly,
to compare and contrast some of the competing theoretical accounts of
the "social institutions" in question.



Social institutions in the sense in use in this entry need to be
distinguished from less complex social forms such as conventions,
rules, social norms, roles and rituals. The latter are among the
constitutive elements of institutions.



Social institutions also need to be distinguished from more complex
and more complete social entities, such as societies or cultures, of
which any given institution is typically a constitutive element. A
society, for example, is more complete than an institution since a
society--at least as traditionally understood--is more or
less self-sufficient in terms of human resources, whereas an
institution is not. Thus, arguably, for an entity to be a society it
must sexually reproduce its membership, have its own language and
educational system, provide for itself economically and--at least
in principle--be politically independent.



Social institutions are often organisations (Scott 2001). Moreover,
many institutions are *systems* of organisations grounded in
economic, political etc. spheres of activity (Walzer 1983). For
example, capitalism is a particular kind of economic institution, and
in modern times capitalism consists in large part in specific
organisational forms--including multi-national
corporations--organised into a system. Further, some institutions
are *meta-institutions*; they are institutions (organisations)
that organise other institutions (including systems of organisations).
For example, governments are meta-institutions. The institutional end
or function of a government consists in large part in organising other
institutions (both individually and collectively); thus governments
regulate and coordinate economic systems, educational institutions,
police and military organisations and so on largely by way of
(enforceable) legislation.



In this entry the concern is principally with social institutions
(including meta-institutions) that are also organisations or systems
of organisations. However, it should be noted that institutions of
language, such as the English language, are often regarded not simply
as institutions but as more fundamental than many other kinds of
institution by virtue of being presupposed by, or in part constitutive
of, other institutions. Searle, for example, holds to the latter view
(Searle 1995: 37; Searle 2008). A case might also be made that the
family is a more fundamental institution than others for related
reasons, e.g. it is the site of sexual reproduction and initial
socialisation (Schoeman 1980; Lamanna 2002). 



Note also that uses of the term "institution" in such
expressions as "the institution of government", are often
ambiguous. Sometimes what is meant is a particular token, e.g. the
current government in Australia, sometimes a type, i.e. the set of
properties instantiated in any actual government, and sometimes a set
of tokens, i.e. all governments. Restricting the notion of an
institution to organisations is helpful in this regard; the term
"organisation" almost always refers to a particular token.
On the other hand, the term "institution" connotes a
certain gravity not connoted by the term "organisation";
so arguably those institutions that are organisations are
organisations that have a central and important role to play in or for
a society. Being central and important to a society, such roles are
usually long lasting ones; hence institutions are typically
trans-generational.



Having informally marked off social institutions from other social
forms, let us turn to a consideration of some general properties of
social institutions. Here there are four salient properties, namely,
structure, function, culture and sanctions.



Roughly speaking, an institution that is an organisation or system of
organisations consists (at least) of an embodied (occupied by human
persons) structure of differentiated roles (Miller 2010; Ludwig 2017).
(Naturally, many institutions also have have additional non-human
components, e.g. buildings, raw materials.) These roles are defined in
terms of tasks, and rules regulating the performance of those tasks.
Moreover, there is a degree of interdependence among these roles, such
that the performance of the constitutive tasks of one role cannot be
undertaken, or cannot be undertaken except with great difficulty,
unless the tasks constitutive of some other role or roles in the
structure have been undertaken or are being undertaken. Further, these
roles are often related to one another hierarchically, and hence
involve different levels of status and degrees of authority. Finally,
on teleological and functional accounts, these roles are related to
one another in part in virtue of their contribution to (respectively)
the *end(s)* or *function(s)* of the institution; and
the realisation of these ends or function normally involves
interaction among the institutional actors in question and external
non-institutional actors. (The assumption here is that the concept of
an end and of a function are distinct concepts. On some accounts,
function is a quasi-causal notion (Cohen 1978 Chapter IX), on others
it is a teleological notion, albeit one that does not necessarily
involve the existence of any mental states (Ryan 1970 Chapter 8)). The
constitutive roles of an institution and their relations to one
another can be referred to as the *structure* of the
institution. 



I note that the common-sense view that an institution consists
(essentially) of an embodied structure of roles has been thought by
some to be undermined by the consideration that actions are ascribed
to institutions per se (as opposed to their members), e.g. in the
sentence, 'The Supreme Court of the United State ruled that
segregation is unconstitutional', and the fact that an
institution could have had different members than the ones it actually
had, e.g. someone other than Brett Kavanaugh might have been nominated
by President Trump to sit on the Supreme Court and confirmed by the US
Senate. In response to this kind of argument Ludwig has, in effect,
defended the common-sense view by proffering his time-indexed,
reductive individualist view according to which not only is the
Supreme Court the group that consists of everyone who is at any time a
member of the Supreme Court, but what the Supreme Court does at any
time is what the those justices at that time do (Ludwig 2017: 66).
Importantly, Ludwig points out that the term, "the Supreme Court
of the US" functions as a definite description and not a name.
As is the case with all definite descriptions, e.g. "the
President of the US", the individuals picked out by "the
Supreme Court of the US" could have been different (Ludwig 2017:
68). 



An important distinction relevant to the understanding of
institutional structure can be made between what is constitutive of an
institution, e.g. the judges of the Supreme Court, and what is
required to maintain it in existence, e.g. acceptance of the authority
of the Supreme Court by the US citizenry. (See sections 3 and 5
below.)



Note that on the conception of institutions as *embodied*
structures of roles and associated rules, the nature of any
institution at a given time will to some extent reflect the personal
character of different role occupants, especially influential role
occupants, e.g. the British Government during the Second World War
reflected to some extent Winston Churchill's character.
Moreover, institutions in this sense are dynamic, evolving entities;
as such, they have a history, the diachronic structure of a narrative
and (usually) a partially open-ended future.



Aside from the formal and usually explicitly stated, or defined, tasks
and rules, there is an important implicit and informal dimension of an
institution roughly describable as institutional *culture*.
This notion comprises the informal attitudes, values, norms, and the
ethos or "spirit" which pervades an institution. As such,
it is to be distinguished from the wider notions of culture frequently
in use among anthropologists. Culture in the wide sense embraces not
only informal but also formal elements of institutions, e.g. rules and
other components of structure (Tylor 1871; Munch and Smelser 1993)).
Culture in the narrow sense influences much of the activity of the
members of that institution, or at least the manner in which that
activity is undertaken. So while the explicitly determined rules and
tasks might say nothing about being secretive or "sticking by
one's mates come what may" or having a hostile or negative
attitude to particular social groups, these attitudes and practices
might in fact be pervasive; they might be part of the culture
(Skolnick 2008). 



It is sometimes claimed that in addition to structure, function and
culture, social institutions necessarily involve sanctions. It is
uncontroversial that social institutions involve informal sanctions,
such as moral disapproval following on non-conformity to institutional
norms. However, some theorists, e.g. Jon Elster (1989: Chapter XV),
argue that formal sanctions, such as punishment, are a necessary
feature of institutions. Formal sanctions are certainly a feature of
most, if not all, of those institutions that operate within a legal
system. However, they do not appear to be a feature of all
institutions. Consider, for example, an elaborate and longstanding
system of informal economic exchange among members of different
societies that have no common system of laws or enforced rules.



Thus far we have informally marked off social institutions from other
social forms, and we have identified a number of general properties of
social institutions. It is now time to introduce and taxonomize some
of the main theoretical accounts of social institutions, including
historically important ones. In sections 2, 3 and 4 recent influential
theories of social institutions will be discussed in more detail.



Notwithstanding our understanding of social institutions as complex
social forms, some theoretical accounts of institutions identify
institutions with relatively simple social forms--especially
conventions, social norms or rules. At one level this is merely a
verbal dispute; contra our procedure here, such simpler forms could
simply be termed "institutions". However, at another level
the dispute is not merely verbal, since what we are calling
"institutions" would on such a view consist simply of sets
of conventions, social norms or rules. Let us refer to such accounts
as *atomistic* theories of institutions (Taylor 1985: Chapter
7). Schotter is a case in point (Schotter 1981) as is North
(1990). The best known contemporary form of atomism is rational choice
theory and it has been widely accepted in, indeed it is in part
constitutive of, modern economics. The most influential philosophical
theory within a broadly rational choice framework is David
Lewis' theory of conventions (Lewis 1969). According to Lewis,
conventions are regularities in action that solve coordination
problems confronted by individual agents.



The "atoms" within atomistic accounts themselves typically
consist of the actions of individual human persons, e.g. conventions
as regularities in action. The individual agents are not themselves
defined in terms of institutional forms, such as institutional roles.
Hence atomistic theories of institutions tend to go hand in glove with
atomistic theories of all collective entities, e.g. a society consists
of an aggregate of individual human persons. Moreover, atomistic
theories tend to identify the individual agent as the locus of moral
value. On this kind of view, social forms, including social
institutions, have moral value only derivatively, i.e. only in so far
as they contribute to the prior needs, desires or other requirements
of individual agents.



The regularities in action (or rules or norms) made use of in such
atomistic accounts of institutions cannot simply be a single
person's regularities in action (or a single person's
rules or norms prescribing his or her individual action alone); rather
there must be interdependence of action such that, for example, agent
*A* only performs action *x*, if other agents,
*B* and *C* do likewise. Moreover, some account of the
interdependence of action in question is called for, e.g. that it is
not the sort of interdependence of action involved in conflict
situations (although it might arise as a solution to a prior conflict
situation).



Assume that the conventions, norms or rules in question are social in
the sense that they involve the required interdependence of action,
e.g. the parties to any given convention, or the adherent to any such
norm or rule, conform to (respectively) the convention, norm or rule
on the condition that others do. Nevertheless, such interdependence of
action is not sufficient for a convention, norm or rule, or even a set
of conventions, norms or rules, to be an institution. Governments,
universities, corporations etc. are structured, unitary entities.
Accordingly, a mere *set* of conventions (or norms or rules)
does not constitute an institution. For example, the set of
conventions comprising the convention to drive on the left, the
convention to utter, "Australia", to refer to Australia,
and the convention to use chopsticks does not constitute an
institution. Accordingly, a problem for atomistic accounts of social
institutions is the need to provide an account of the structure and
unity of social institutions, and an account that is faithful to
atomism, e.g. that the structure is essentially aggregative in nature.
On the other hand, 'atomists' can obviously help
themselves to some notion of a bundle of related conventions or rules.
Consider for instance a set of traffic rules, e.g. 'drive on the
left', 'do not exceed 35 miles per hour in built up
areas' and so on. Moreover, the 'bundle' might
include a variety of types of atomistic social forms, e.g.
conventions, norms and rules. Guala's account of institutions
(Guala 2016) is a case in point, as we shall see in section 2 below.




By contrast with atomistic accounts of social institutions,
*holistic*--including
*structuralist-functionalist*--accounts stress the
inter-relationships of institutions (structure) and their contribution
to larger and more complete social complexes, especially societies
(function). Thus according to Barry Barnes (1995: 37):
"Functionalist theories in the social sciences seek to describe,
to understand and in most cases to explain the orderliness and
stability of entire social systems. In so far as they treat
individuals, the treatment comes after and emerges from analysis of
the system as a whole. Functionalist theories move from an
understanding of the whole to an understanding of the parts of that
whole, whereas individualism proceeds in the opposite
direction". Moreover, (Barnes 1995: 41), "such accounts
list the "functions" of the various institutions. They
describe the function of the economy as the production of goods and
services essential to the operation of the other institutions and
hence the system as a whole." Such theorists include Durkheim
(1964), Radcliffe-Brown (1958) and Parsons (1968; 1982). Of particular
concern to these theorists was the moral decay consequent (in their
view) upon the demise of strong, mutually supportive social
institutions. Durkheim, for example, advocated powerful professional
associations. He said (1957 p.6): 



> 
> A system of morals is always the affair of a group and can operate
> only if the group protects them by its authority. It is made up of
> rules which govern individuals, which compel them to act in such and
> such a way, and which impose limits to their inclinations and forbid
> them to go beyond. Now there is only one moral power--moral, and
> hence common to all--which stands above the individual and which
> can legitimately make laws for him, and that is collective power. To
> the extent the individual is left to his own devices and freed from
> all social constraint, he is unfettered by all moral constraint. It is
> not possible for professional ethics to escape this fundamental
> condition of any system of morals. Since, then, the society as a whole
> feels no concern in professional ethics, it is imperative that there
> be special groups in the society, within which these morals may be
> evolved, and whose business it is to see that they are observed.
> 



Moreover, here the meta-institution of government obviously has a
pivotal directive and integrative role in relation to other
institutions and their inter-relationships, even though government is
itself simply one institution within the larger society. Further,
holistic accounts of institutions lay great stress on institutional
roles defined in large part by social norms; institutional roles are
supposedly largely, or even wholly, constitutive of the identity of
the individual human agents who occupy these roles. (Individuals
participate in a number of institutions and hence occupy a number of
institutional roles; hence the alleged possibility of their identity
being constituted by a number of different institutional roles.)



Many such holistic accounts deploy and depend on the model, or at
least analogy, of an organism. A salient historical figure here is
Herbert Spencer (1971, Part 3B--*A Society is an
Organism*). On this holistic, organicist model, social
institutions are analogous to the organs or limbs of a human body.
Each organ or limb has a function the realisation of which contributes
to the well-being of the body as a whole, and none can exist
independently of the others. Thus the human body relies on the stomach
to digest food in order to continue living, but the stomach cannot
exist independently of the body or of other organs, such as the heart.
Likewise, it is suggested, any given institution, e.g. law courts,
contributes to the well-being of the society as a whole, and yet is
dependent on other institutions, e.g. government. Here the
"well-being" of the society as a whole is sometimes
identified with the stability and continuation of the society as it
is; hence the familiar charge that holistic, organicist accounts are
inherently politically conservative. This political conservatism
transmutes into political authoritarianism when society is identified
with the system of institutions that constitute the nation-state and
the meta-institution of the nation-state--the government--is
assigned absolute authority in relation to all other institutions.
Hence the contrasting emphasis in political liberalism on the
separation of powers among, for example, the executive, the
legislature and the judiciary. 



Holistic accounts of social institutions often invoke the terminology
of internal and external relations (Bradley 1935). An internal
relation is one that is definitive of, or in some way essential to,
the entity it is a relation of; by contrast, external relations are
not in this way essential. Thus being married to someone is an
internal relation of spouses; if a man is a husband then necessarily
he stands in the relation of being married to someone else. Likewise,
if someone is a judge in a court of law then necessarily he stands in
an adjudicative relationship to defendants. Evidently, many
institutional roles are possessed of, and therefore in part defined
by, their internal relations to other institutional roles.



However, the existence of institutional roles with internal relations
to other institutional roles does not entail a holistic account of
social institutions. For the internal relations in question might not
be relations among institutional roles in different institutions;
rather they might simply be internal relations among different
institutional roles in the same institution. On the other hand, the
existence of institutional roles with internal relations does
undermine the attempts of certain forms of atomistic individualism to
reduce institutions to the individual human agents who happen to
constitute them; ex hypothesi, the latter are not qua individual human
persons in part defined in terms of their relations to institutional
roles.



In the context of a discussion of atomistic and holist accounts of
institutions, it is important to distinguish the view that
institutions are not reducible to the individual human persons who
constitute them from the view that institutions are themselves agents
possessed of minds and a capacity to reason (see Section 5). Epstein
(2015) has offered detailed arguments against the former view,
including in its favoured contemporary form according to which
institutions (and other collective entities) supervene on the
individual persons whose roles they occupy. Thus Epstein points out
(2015: 46) that some facts about the firm, Starbucks, do not depend
(supervene)on facts about people and the actions they perform but
rather on facts about coffee, for instance. (See also Ruben
1985). Peter French (1984) is an advocate of the latter view as are,
in somewhat different forms, List and Pettit (2011), Tollefsen (2015)
and Epstein (2015). (See also Margaret Gilbert's notion of a
"plural subject" [1989: 200]). Searle (1990), Miller
(2001) and Ludwig (2017) have argued against the
proposition that collective entities per se are agents possessed of
mental states. For instance, Ludwig has offered analyses of sentences
that apparently ascribe mental states to collective entities, such as
'Germany intends to invade Poland', in terms of the
intentions of individual members of these entities, and the actions of
collective entities in terms of the members of the collective group in
question being agents of an event (Ludwig 2017).



Thus far we have discussed atomistic and holistic accounts of social
institutions. However, there is a third possibility, namely, (what
might be termed) *molecular* accounts. Roughly speaking, a
molecular account of an institution would not seek to reduce the
institution to simpler atomic forms, such as conventions; nor would it
seek to define an institution in terms of its relationships with other
institutions and its contribution to the larger societal whole.
Rather, each institution would be analogous to a molecule; it would
have constitutive elements ("atoms") but also have its own
structure and unity. A number of philosophical theories of social
institutions are explicitly or implicitly molecular in character
(Harre 1969; Searle 1995; Miller 2010). Moreover, on this conception
each social institution would have a degree of independence
vis-a-vis other institutions and the society at large; on the
other hand, the set of institutions might itself under certain
conditions form a unitary system of sorts, e.g. a contemporary liberal
democratic nation-state comprised of a number of semi-autonomous
public and private institutions functioning in the context of the
meta-institution of government.



A general problem for holistic organicist accounts of social
institutions--as opposed to molecular accounts--is that
social institutions can be responses to *trans-societal*
requirements or needs. Accordingly, an institution is not necessarily
a constitutive element of some given society in the sense that it is
both in part constitutive of that society and wholly contained within
that society. Examples of such trans-societal institutions are the
international financial system, the international legal system, the
United Nations and some multi-national corporations. Indeed, arguably
any given element of such a trans-societal institution stands in some
*internal* relations to elements of other societies.



In this section accounts of institutions have been discussed in
general terms. It is now time to focus on some specific influential,
contemporary philosophical accounts beginning with ones based in
rational choice theory.


## 2. Social Institutions and Coordination Equilibria



As noted above, the starting point for theories of social institutions
utilising a rational choice framework is Lewis' theory of
conventions (Lewis 1969). According to Lewis--who was inspired by
Hume (Hume 1740: Book III)--conventions are the solutions to
coordination problems. (See also Schwayder 1965.) Thus the regularity
in behaviour of driving on the right is the solution to the
coordination problem confronting road users. Here there are two
equilibria: everyone driving on the right or, alternatively, everyone
driving on the left. Everyone driving on the right is an equilibrium
since everyone prefers to drive on the right, given everyone else
does, and everyone expects everyone to drive on the right. Conventions
are certainly ubiquitous. However, social institutions evidently
consist in more than conventions. Importantly, as noted above, they
consist in part in rules, including but not restricted to laws and
regulations. But regularities in behaviour that result from compliance
with rules are not necessarily equilibria in the sense in use in
rational choice theory. Accordingly, a serviceable account of social
institutions looks like it needs to help itself (at least) to both
conventions (or, at least, equilibria in the sense of Nash equilibria,
i.e. (roughly) a combination of actions such that no actor has an
incentive to change his or her action unilaterally), and rules. 



Guala has propounded an account of institutions he refers to as the
rules-in-equilibrium approach. This account, as its name suggests,
seeks to unify the rules-based conception of institutions and the view
that institutions are the equilibria of strategic games (Guala 2016).
As such, institutions facilitate coordination and cooperation; indeed,
that is their defining function. However, regularities in behaviour in
accordance with an equilibrium strategy, e.g. everyone driving on the
left, typically take the form of a rule, e.g. 'Drive on the
left'. Therefore, according to Guala, essentially institutions
are rules that people are motivated to follow, i.e. rules backed up by
a system of incentives and expectations that motivate people to follow
these rules. Accordingly, and in contrast with collective acceptance
accounts (see section 3 below), there is no need to posit joint
intentions or the like in order to ensure the rules in part
constitutive of an institution are followed--or otherwise to
provide the 'glue' that holds an institution together.




Moreover, contra Searle (1995) and (again) contra the
collective acceptance account (see section 3 below), for the most part
institutional rules are merely regulative and not constitutive (Guala
2016: ch.5). Roughly speaking, a regulative rule governs a
pre-existing action type, e.g. 'Do not walk on the grass',
whereas constitutive rules (supposedly) create new forms of activity,
e.g. the rules of chess, and have the form 'X counts as Y in
circumstances, C' (Searle 2010: 96). According to Guala,
constitutive rules are not necessary to institutions; regulative rules
are sufficient. (See section 3 below.) 



Guala's account has implications for controversies concerning
alleged differences between the natural sciences and the social
sciences and, specifically, for the pluralist view that unlike natural
entities, social entities, such as institutions, are mind-dependent
(Searle 2010). For example, the fact that a dollar bill is money and
not merely paper, depends on a collective belief that it can be used
as a medium of exchange. By contrast, a molecule of water is water
irrespective of anyone's belief. At this point Guala invokes a
distinction between causal dependence and ontological dependence.
Dollar bills are causally dependent on beliefs but not ontologically
dependent. Since the causal dependence of social entities on beliefs
and the like is consistent with the causal dependence of natural
entities on one another and on beliefs etc., the mind-dependence of
social entities does not imply a pluralist view of the natural
sciences and the social sciences. A monist conception is admissible.




Moreover, according to Guala, the view that institutions are
mind-dependent (Searle 2010: 17-18) is inconsistent with the existence
of mistaken beliefs about institutions on the part of participants in
those institutions. Guala is certainly right to claim that there are
such mistaken beliefs, e.g. everyone might falsely believe that their
worthless devalued currency was money. What of his argument that some
advocates of the mind-dependence of institutions are necessarily
committed to infallibilism--and, specifically, to the false claim
that institutional participants cannot be mistaken about their
institutions? Guala states that infallibilism about social kinds (e.g.
we cannot be wrong about whether a piece of paper is money or not) and
anti-realism (e.g. a piece of paper is money if we collectively accept
that it is) go together and do so "because their
opposites--realism and fallibilism are tightly connected"
(Guala 2016:151). If objects exist independently of our
representations of them (realism) then our representations can be
mistaken (fallibilism). On the other hand, if objects ontologically
depend on our representations of them (anti-realism)--and, in
particular, our collective beliefs about them--then we cannot be
mistaken about them (infallibilism). 



Guala also argues (2016: ch. 14) that his monist
rules-in-equilibrium approach can resolve normative disputes, such as
those in relation to same-sex marriage. On his unified account, he
claims, realism can be preserved, e.g. marriage does not depend
non-causally on our intentions, but yet same-sex marriage is
allowable. In this connection Guala relies on the type/token
distinction and argues that while institution tokens solve particular
coordination problems, institution types are identified by their
functions, e.g. same-sex unions fulfil the functions of marriage.
However, the conservative view, e.g. of the Catholic Church, would
simply dispute that same-sex marriages do serve the same essential
functions, e.g., the function of procreation. Moreover, this manoeuvre
does not seem to address adequately the normative questions that now
arises at the level of functions. What function or functions ought
marriage serve? What moral constraints are there on specific social
arrangements that might otherwise serve those functions, e.g.
polygamy? Here it is a background assumption that while the function
or functions that an institution should have depends in part on the
functions that it in fact has, one cannot simply read off the former
from the latter. A corrupt police force might have the enrichment of
most of its officers as one of its de facto functions but it would not
follow from this that this was a legitimate function.



Moreover, Guala's normative neutrality is open to question.
Guala's rules-in-equilibrium account of institutions helps
itself only to instrumental normativity (including the rationality of
compliance due to sanctions) and eschews moral considerations in
favour of the permissive notion of preference. The contrast here is
with the teleological account (section 4) which grounds institutions
on collective goods, especially aggregate human need, e.g. the need
for food (agricultural institutions), health (hospitals), education
(schools), security (police services) etc. And, as David Wiggins has
argued (1991) needs generate moral obligations. On
Guala's view cooperative enterprises which undermine
institutions, e.g. corrupt cliques, criminal organisations, can
themselves be institutions, as can somewhat trivial
convention-governed games, e.g. tic-tac-toe, hopscotch. 



More generally, Guala's view seems to overstate the coordinating
function of institutions and, as a result, conflate the underlying
problem solved by an institution with the surface problem that the
availability of multiple solutions gives rise to, i.e. the problem of
coordinating on one of the available solutions. Thus the underlying
problem of avoiding traffic collisions is solved by all traffic
travelling in one direction keeping to one side of the road and all
traffic travelling in the opposite direction keeping to the opposite
side. However, this solution now gives rise to a coordination problem
since there are two equally good solutions, i.e. all driving on the
left or all driving on the right. This point applies to other rational
choice coordination equilibria approaches, including Lewis'
influential theory of conventions (Miller 1986).


## 3. Collective Acceptance Theory of Institutions



Collective acceptance accounts and, for that matter teleological
accounts, of social action in general, and of social institutions in
particular, fall within the rationalist, individualist, philosophy of
action tradition that has its roots in Aristotle, Hume and Kant and is
associated with contemporary analytic philosophers of social action
such as Michael Bratman (1987), John Searle (1995), and Raimo Tuomela
(2002). However, this way of proceeding also has a place outside
philosophy, in sociological theory. Broadly speaking, it is the
starting point for the voluntaristic theory of social action
associated with the likes of Georg Simmel (1971), Max Weber (1949),
(the early) Talcott Parsons (1968) and Alfred Schutz (Schutz
and Parsons 1978). For example, the following idea in relation to
social action is expressed by Parsons (1968: 229): 



> 
> actions do not take place separately each with a separate, discrete
> end in relation to the situation, but in long complicated
> 'chains' ... [and] the total complex of means-end
> relationships is not to be thought of as similar to a large number of
> parallel threads, but as a complicated web (if not a tangle).
> 



However, unsurprisingly, the teleological account lays much greater
explanatory emphasis on the means-end relationship in collective
action contexts and much less on collective acceptance. 



That said, the starting point for both kinds of theory has been the
notion of a joint action and its constitutive conative notions (or,at
least, terminology) of shared intentions (Bratman 2014), we-intentions
(Tuomela 2013), collective intentions (Searle 1990), collective ends
(Miller 2001: Chapter 2), depending on which theorist is in question.
Examples of joint action are two people lifting a table together, and
two men jointly pushing a car. However, such basic two person joint
actions exist at one end of a spectrum. At the other end are much more
complex, multi-person, joint actions, such as a large group of
engineers, tradesmen and construction workers jointly building a
skyscraper or the members of an army jointly fighting a battle.



Over the last several decades a number of analyses of joint action
have emerged (Gilbert 1989; Miller 2001: Chapter 2; Searle 1990 and
1995; Tuomela 2002; Schmid 2009; Ludwig 2016). A number of these
theorists have developed and applied their favoured basic accounts of
joint action in order to account for a range of social phenomena,
including conventions, social norms and social institutions.



Individualism (of which more below) is committed to an analysis of
joint action such that ultimately a joint action consists of: (1) a
number of singular actions; and (2) relations among these singular
actions. Moreover, the constitutive conative attitudes involved in
joint actions are individual attitudes; there are no sui generis
we-attitudes.



By contrast, according to supra-individualists (Gilbert 1989), when a
plurality of individual agents perform a joint action, then the agents
have the relevant propositional attitudes (beliefs, intentions etc.)
in an irreducible 'we-form', which is sui generis (Searle
1990) and as such not analysable in terms of individual or I-attitudes
Tuomela 2013). Moreover, the individual agents constitute a new
entity, a supra-individual entity not reducible to the individual
agents and the relations among them (Epstein 2015).



If the starting point for theorists in this strand of contemporary
philosophy of action is joint action (and its associated collective
intentionality), it is by no means the endpoint. Specifically, there
is the important matter of the relationship between joint action and
social institutions. For example, while joint actions per se do not
seem to necessarily involve rights, duties and other deontic
properties (see Gilbert 1989 for a contrary view), it is self-evident
that social institutions do so. Theorists within this recent tradition
agree that joint actions--or perhaps the collective
intentionality definitive of joint actions--is at least one of
the building blocks of social institutions. However, the question
remains as to the precise relationship between joint actions (and its
associated collective intentionality) on the one hand, and social
institutions on the other. More specifically, there is the question of
how, or if, we-intentions can generate deontic properties, such as the
institutional rights and duties definitive of institutional roles.




According to collective acceptance accounts (Searle 1995 and 2010;
Tuomela 2002; Ludwig 2017), social institutions are created and
maintained by collective acceptance. Collective acceptance accounts
are constructivist; institutional facts and, therefore, institutions
exist only in so far as they are collectively believed to exist or are
otherwise the content of a collective attitude, such as a
we-intention. Typically, such collective attitudes are not to be
understood as reducible to individual attitudes or aggregates thereof.
(Ludwig is an exception among collective acceptance adherents.
According to him the so-called we-intentions constitutive of
collective acceptance (Ludwig 2017: 132) are analysable in terms of
interlocking individual intentions to achieve some outcome by means of
a shared plan (Ludwig 2017: 26)). Thus Searle claims his notion of a
collective intention or we-intention is a primitive notion that is not
reducible to an individual intention, nor to an individual intention
in conjunction with other individual attitudes such as individual
beliefs (Searle 1995: 24-6; Searle 2010: Chapter 3). Searle's
invocation of an unanalysed allegedly primitive notion is
controversial in the context of reductive accounts (Miller 2001;
Bratman 2014; Ludwig 2016). On the other hand, Tuomela provides a
non-reductive analysis of we-intentions. He makes a distinction
between irreducibly collective we-mode attitudes and individualistic
pro-group I-mode attitudes (Tuomela 2013: 6-7) and does so on the
grounds that the former involve the intention to act together as a
group. However, Tuomela is open to the objection that the notion of
acting qua member of a group can itself be analysed as acting in
according with an individual end which each agent has interdependently
with the others (a shared interdependent end) (Miller 2010: 52-54).




Collective acceptance is not simply a matter of psychological
attitudes standing in some straightforward causal relation to the
external world as is the case, for instance, with common or
garden-variety intentions, including the joint intentions definitive
of basic joint actions. The idea is not that a group forms a joint
intention to (say) push a boulder up a hill and, thereby, jointly
cause the boulder to be relocated to the top of the hill. Rather the
notion of a performative is typically invoked (Austin 1962; Searle
2010: 11).



Examples of performatives are: 'I name this ship the Queen
Elizabeth'--as uttered when smashing the bottle against the
stem; 'I give and bequeath my watch to my
brother'--as occurring in a will (Austin 1962: 5).
Performative are speech acts which bring about an outcome in the
external world (e.g. that the name of the ship is the Queen Elizabeth
or that my brother is the owner of what used to be my watch).
Specifically, performatives are sayings which are also doings. In
Searle's terminology, merely saying something ('I
do') counts as something else (becoming a wife). An important
species of performatives are declarative speech acts (e.g. saying
'I declare war' in a certain context counts as going to
war). A key point about performatives appears to be that it is by
virtue of a convention that saying such and such in a given context
brings the outcome about (Miller 1984). Accordingly, the outcome
depends on collective acceptance (in the sense of compliance with the
convention) and, indeed, to this extent the outcome is in part
constituted by collective acceptance (in this sense). Searle himself
speaks of constitutive rules at this point; rules that have the form
'X counts as Y in context C' (Searle 2010: 95).



As mentioned above, Guala denies a central role to constitutive rules.
According to Guala, (following Hindriks 2009), constitutive
rules are essentially naming devices; they state the conditions of
application of theoretical terms used to refer to institutions. For
instance, a dollar note (X) counts as money (Y) if it is issued by the
relevant authority. Here the Y term simply names a pattern of activity
governed by regulative rules, e.g. 'Use the note as a medium of
exchange'. Other theorists who have, in effect, reduced or
otherwise down-graded Searle's notion of constitutive rules in
favour of regulative rules, including systems of regulative rules are
Miller (2001: 191) and, more recently, Ludwig (2017).
According to Ludwig, constitutive rules are regulative rules such that
intentionally following them constitutes the activity they govern
(Ludwig 2017: 262).



Favourite examples of collective acceptance theorists are money,
political authorities, and, most importantly for our concerns here,
so-called status roles. Thus Tuomela says (2007: 183):
"'performative' collective acceptance must have been
in place for squirrel pelt to become money." And Searle says
(2010: 101): "But when we count pieces of paper of a
particular sort as twenty-dollar bills we are making them twenty
dollar bills by Declaration. The Declaration makes something the case
by counting it as, that, by declaring it to be, the case." The
problem with this view of money (in its role purely as a medium of
exchange) is that Tuomela's invocation of performatives and
Searle's invocation of declaratives seem unnecessary. The fact
that squirrel pelts, shells or bit of inked paper are used as mediums
of exchange is sufficient for them to be money. For a squirrel pelt to
count as money or to be treated as money or to be collectively
accepted as money is just for it to be used as a medium of exchange.
The notion of collective acceptance either collapses into regular,
interdependent, use or it is superfluous. Nor do such informal
exchange systems necessarily generate deontic properties; if your
squirrel pelt is refused as a medium of exchange by someone then your
expectation (in the sense of belief with respect to the future) has
been dashed, but no institutional right has been violated (given the
informal character of the arrangement). Of course it would add greatly
to the stability of this arrangement if these pelts (or, more likely,
bits of inked paper) were somehow authorised as an official medium of
exchange, and if a (rule constituted) system of institutional rights
and duties in relation to the exchange of these shells was introduced
and enforced. However, such a deontological structure does not seem to
be a necessary feature of the system of exchange (Miller 2001: 182;
Guala 2016: 40). Naturally, it could be replied to this that,
nevertheless, institutional rights and duties, as opposed to the
underlying functionality of the arrangement, requires performatives
and, specifically, declaratives. 



What of political authorities? Searle says (1995: 91-2):
"More spectacular examples are provided by the collapse of the
Soviet empire in the annus mirabilis, 1989.... It collapsed when
the system of status-functions was no longer accepted." However,
such collapses of political systems seem to demonstrate a special
feature of institutional positions of authority rather than of
institutional roles in general. Specifically, it is a necessary
condition of wielding authority that subordinates obey the commands of
their superior. Presumably, they do so because they believe the person
in question has a moral right to be obeyed and/or they fear sanctions
if they do not obey (Miller 2001: 189).



What of status roles, i.e. institutional roles, in general? These are
the most important for our purposes in this entry. According to Searle
(see also Ludwig 2017: Chapter 8), institutions necessarily involve
what he calls status-functions, and something has a
status-function--as opposed to a mere function--if it has,
or those who use it have, deontic properties (institutional rights and
duties) and, therefore, deontic powers (Searle 2018). Thus an
orthopaedic surgeon has a status-function, and therefore a set of
deontic powers, including rights to perform operations and charge
people for doing so, and duties not to perform operations he or she is
not accredited to perform, e.g. brain surgery. These status-functions,
and therefore deontic powers, have been created by collectively
accepted constitutive rules (constitutive rules, as we have seen, have
for Searle the general form 'X counts as Y in context C').
Importantly, as we saw above, according to Searle, constitutive rules
do not regulate a pre-existing activity; rather the activity is
created by, and consists in acting in accordance with, constitutive
(and related regulative) rules. Accordingly, institutional roles are
of the same general kind as pieces in a game of chess (to use one of
Searle's favourite examples (Searle 2018: 305)) and, therefore,
unlike driving a car (which, according to Searle, pre-exists the
regulative rules that govern it (Searle 2018: 305)); institutional
roles and their defining deontic properties, are institutional facts
created by collectively accepted constitutive rules. 



The first point to be made here is that contra Searle many
institutional roles seem more akin to regularly driving a car than to
chess pieces. The institutional role of surgeon is a case point. The
ability and activity definitive of a surgeon, i.e. cutting and
stitching human bodies, is evidently logically prior to the
institutional rights and duties that attach to the institutional role
of a surgeon (Miller 2001: 186). More generally, a surgeon could
seemingly carry out surgical operations on willing patients
irrespective not only of whether she was professionally accredited
(and, therefore, possessed of the requisite institutional rights and
duties), but also of whether she was widely regarded as a surgeon in
her community. Consider, for instance, a morally motivated, skilful,
surgeon whose full-time job is transplanting hearts in a jurisdiction
in which organ transplantation is illegal.



If this is correct then the crucial issue that now arises concerns the
relationship between possession of the deontic properties, i.e.
institutional rights and duties, at least in part constitutive of an
institutional role, on the one hand, and the actual ability to
undertake that role, bearing in mind that the activity is, at least in
some cases of institutional roles, logically prior to its
institutional raiment. Specifically, are the institutional rights and
duties in part definitive of institutional roles, such as that of a
surgeon, merely the creation of collectively accepted constitutive
rules, irrespective of how collective acceptance and constitutive
rules are understood (see, for instance, Ludwig (2017: Chapter
8) for a view that derives from, but is somewhat different to,
Searle's), or are they based on more than this? For instance,
are institutional rights and duties in large part based on moral
considerations, such as needs, e.g. the institutional right to perform
heart transplants is based on the needs of patient for a new heart, as
per the teleological account of social institutions (section 4 below)?
One response favoured by collective acceptance theorists, such as
Tuomela (2013: 126) and Ludwig (2017: 129-130), is to
invoke the notion of an explicit or implicit agreement (and,
therefore, promise or quasi-promise) as in part constitutive of
collective acceptance (because either constitutive of we-intentions or
of conventions). However, this reliance on the notion of an agreement
ultimately grounds deontic properties on a contractualist moral theory
and, therefore, brings with it all the objections to such theories,
e.g. that there typically no explicit agreements and a lack of
evidence of many implicit agreements.


## 3. The Teleological Account of Institutions



As noted above, the central concept in the teleological account of
social institutions (Miller 2010) is that of joint action. On the
teleological account, joint actions consist of the intentional
individual actions of a number of agents directed to the realisation
of a collective end. (Note that intentions are not the same things as
ends, e.g. an agent who intentionally and *gratuitously* raises
his arm *ex hypothesi* has no end or purpose in doing so.)
Importantly, on the teleological account, a collective
end--notwithstanding its name--is a species of individual
end; it is an end possessed by each of the individuals involved in the
joint action. However it is an end, which is not realised by the
action of any one of the individuals; the actions of all or most
realise the end. So contra anti-reductionist theorists such as
Gilbert, Tuomela and Searle, the teleological account holds that joint
actions can be analysed in terms of individualist notions. A second
major point of differentiation from collective acceptance accounts is
that on the teleological account conative notions, such as
we-intentions and, more relevantly, collective ends, cannot in and of
themselves generate deontic properties, specifically institutional
rights and duties. Accordingly, the basis for deontic properties must
lie elsewhere. As we shall see, on the teleological account, the basis
for deontological properties is to be found in large part in the
collective goods provided by institutions.



Collective ends can be unconsciously pursued, and have not necessarily
been at any time explicitly formulated in the minds of those pursuing
them; collective ends can be *implicit* in the behaviour and
attitudes of agents without ceasing to be ends as such. Further, in
the case of a collective end pursued over a long period of time, e.g.
by members of an institution over generations, the collective end can
be *latent* at a specific point in time, i.e. it is not
actually being pursued, explicitly or implicitly, at that point in
time. However, it does not thereby cease to be an end of that
institution--which is to say, of those persons--even at
those times when it is not being pursued.



As we saw above, organisations consist of an (embodied) formal
*structure* of interlocking roles. These roles can be defined
in terms of tasks, regularities in action and the like. Moreover,
unlike social groups, organisations are individuated by the kind of
activity which they undertake, and also by their characteristic
*ends*. So we have governments, universities, business
corporations, armies, and so on. Perhaps governments have as an end or
goal the ordering and leading of societies, universities the end of
discovering and disseminating knowledge, and so on (Miller 2010: Part
B). Here it is important to reiterate that these ends are, firstly,
collective ends and, secondly, often the latent and/or implicit
(collective) ends of individual institutional actors.



On the teleological account, a further defining feature of
organisations is that organisational action typically consists in,
what has elsewhere been termed, a *layered structure of joint
actions*. One illustration of the notion of a layered structure of
joint actions is an armed force fighting a battle. Suppose at an
organisation level a number of "actions" are severally
necessary and jointly sufficient to achieve some collective end. Thus
the "actions" of the mortar squad destroying enemy gun
emplacements, the flight of military planes providing air-cover and
the infantry platoon taking and holding the ground might be severally
necessary and jointly sufficient to achieve the collective end of
defeating the enemy; as such these "actions" constitute a
joint action. Call each of these "actions" level-two
actions. Suppose, in addition, that each of these level-two
"actions" is itself--at least in part--a joint
action whose component actions are severally necessary and jointly
sufficient for the performance of the level-two "action"
in question. Call these component actions, level-one actions. So the
collective end of the level-one actions is the performance of the
level-two "action". Thus the individual members of the
mortar squad jointly operate the mortar in order to realise the
collective end of destroying enemy gun emplacements. Each pilot,
jointly with the other pilots, strafes enemy soldiers in order to
realise the collective end of providing air-cover for their advancing
foot soldiers. Finally, the set of foot soldiers jointly advance in
order to take and hold the ground vacated by the members of the
retreating enemy force. The actions of each of the individual foot
soldiers, mortar squad members and individual pilots are level-one
actions.



On the teleological account a further feature of many social
institutions is their use of *joint institutional mechanisms*.
Examples of joint institutional mechanisms are the device of tossing a
coin to resolve a dispute and voting to elect a candidate to political
office.



Joint institutional mechanisms consist of: (a) a complex of
differentiated but interlocking actions (the input to the mechanism);
(b)the result of the performance of those actions (the output of the
mechanism), and; (c) the mechanism itself. Thus a given agent might
vote for a candidate. He will do so only if others also vote. But
further to this, there is the action of the candidates, namely, that
they present themselves as candidates. That they present themselves as
candidates is (in part) constitutive of the input to the voting
mechanism. Voters vote *for candidates*. So there is
interlocking and differentiated action (the input). Further there is
some result (as opposed to consequence) of the joint action; the joint
action consisting of the actions of putting oneself forward as a
candidate and of the actions of voting. The result is that some
candidate, say, Barack Obama is voted in (the output). That there is a
result is (in part) constitutive of the mechanism. That to receive the
most number of votes is to be voted in, is (in part) constitutive of
the voting mechanism. Moreover that Obama is voted in is not a
collective end of all the voters. (Although it is a collective end of
those who voted for Obama.) However, that the one who gets the most
votes--whoever that happens to be--is voted in is a
collective end of all the voters, including those who voted for some
candidate other than Obama. 



If the end realised in joint action, and organisational action in
particular, is not merely a collective end, but also a collective
good, then moral properties may well be generated. In the first place,
the collective good might consist in an aggregate of basic human needs
that have been met, as in the case of food producers, schools,
hospitals and police organisations. But, arguably, such needs generate
moral obligations; other things being equal, the desperately poor (for
example) morally ought to be assisted by the ongoing, organised joint
action of those able to assist.



In the second place--at the, so to speak, production, as opposed
to the consumption, end of joint action--the realisation of
collective ends that are also collective goods may well generate joint
moral rights. It is easy to see why some agents, and not other agents,
would have a right to such a good; they are the ones responsible for
its existence, or continued existence. In this connection consider the
managers and workers in a factory that produces cars which are sold
for profit. Managers and workers in the factory--but not
necessarily others--have a joint moral right to be remunerated
from the sales of the cars that they jointly produced--and not
simply on the basis of some contractual arrangement that they have
entered into. It is also clear that if one participating agent has a
moral right to the good, then--other things being equal--so
do the others. That is, there is interdependence of moral rights with
respect to the good. Moreover, these moral rights generate correlative
moral duties on the part of others to respect these rights. Naturally
these prior joint right and duties can be, and are, institutionalised
including by way of contract based legal rights and duties that to
some extent respect the relative contributions made by the
participants. 



Unlike the collective acceptance account the teleological account
introduces moral deontology at the ground floor (so to speak) and
tries to generate institutional deontology on the back of this prior
moral deontology, e.g. institutional moral rights are
inter-subjectively believed moral rights. As such it is open to the
charge that moral deontology presupposes institutional forms. The
concept of a right, for example, might be held to make no sense
outside an institutional environment. Indeed, Searle (2010:
Chapter 8) offers this kind of argument, including in relation to
human rights (Burman 2018). Another objection is that many members of
organisations do not have the collective ends of the institution of
which they are members as an end; rather they perform their roles
because they are paid to do so. However, joint actions can be
performed for individual ends; there can be quasi-joint actions
(Miller 2001: 180)



In this section the teleological account of social institutions has
been elaborated. In the following section issues of institutions and
agency are discussed.


## 4. Institutions and Agency



As mentioned above, it is convenient to conceive of social
institutions as possessed of three dimensions, namely, structure,
function and culture. While the structure, function and culture of an
institution provide a framework within which individuals act, they do
not fully determine the actions of individuals. There are a number of
reasons why this is so. For one thing, rules, norms and ends cannot
cover every contingency that might arise; for another, rules, norms
and so on, themselves need to be interpreted and applied. Moreover,
changing circumstances and unforeseeable problems make it desirable to
vest institutional role occupants (individually or jointly) with
discretionary powers to rethink and adjust old rules, norms, and ends,
and sometimes elaborate new ones (Warwick 1981)



Legitimate individual or collective discretionary activity undertaken
within an institution is typically facilitated by a rational internal
structure--including role structure--, and by a rational
institutional culture. By rational, it is here meant internally
consistent, as well as rational in the light of the
institution's purposes. For instance, a hierarchical role
structure might be rational in one institution, e.g. a defence force,
but not another, e.g. a university. Again, a culture of greed might
undermine an institution's purposes, e.g. in a financial
institution.



Aside from the internal dimensions of an institution, there are its
external relationships, including its relationships to other
institutions. In particular, there is the extent of the independence
of an institution from other institutions, including government. One
thinks here of the separation of powers among the legislative,
executive and judicial institutions in the United States of America
and elsewhere.



It should be noted that, strictly speaking, independence is not the
same thing as autonomy, but is rather a necessary condition for it. An
institution possessed of independence from other institutions might
nevertheless lack autonomy, if it lacked the kinds of rational
internal structure and culture noted above. Indeed, internal conflicts
can paralyse an institution to the point where it becomes incapable of
pursuing its institutional purposes, e.g. a bitterly divided
legislature.



Granted that institutional actors have a degree of discretionary
power, nevertheless, they are constrained by institutional structure,
and specifically the role structure, of the role that they occupy. As
is often pointed out, institutional structure also enables the action
of institutional actors (Giddens 1984). Police officers, for example,
have significant powers not possessed by ordinary citizens. 



A much-discussed issue in the philosophical literature that arises at
this point concerns the alleged agency of of institutions;
specifically, the view that institutions (and other collective
entities) per se are agents. As mentioned, advocates of this view in
one form or another, include French (1984), Gilbert (1989), List and
Pettit (2011), Tollefsen (2015) and Epstein (2015).



List and Pettit provide an argument based on judgement aggregation in
support of their view and suggest, further, that the actions of
collective entities supervene on those of their members. The judgement
aggregation paradox (see also Copp 2007), are supposed to demonstrate
the existence of processes of irreducibly collective reasoning from
which irreducibly collective intentions and judgements--and,
ultimately, group minds--are inferred. (See Szigeti 2013) for
counter-arguments to List and Pettit). A key question is whether the
examples provided by Copp, by List and Pettit and by others can be
accommodated by an analysis which does not help itself to irreducibly
processes of collective reasoning, e.g. the notion of joint
(epistemic) institutional mechanisms (Miller 2018) mentioned in
section 3. Consider the well-known tenure committee example (Copp
2007).



The tenure committee consists of three members and the criteria for
assessment are excellence in teaching, research and administration.
Each of the members of the committee believes the candidate is
excellent in only two of the areas. However, the committee can reach
its conclusion to deny or confirm tenure on the basis of a
conclusion-driven procedure or a premise-driven procedure. If the
conclusion-driven procedure is used tenure will be denied since on
this procedure each votes to confirm tenure only if he or she judges
the candidate to be excellent in all three areas. If the
premise-driven procedure is used tenure will be confirmed. For on this
procedure each votes on each criterion and if a majority judge the
candidate to be excellent on that criterion the candidate is deemed to
be excellent on that criterion. Since with respect to each of the
criteria a majority vote that the candidate is excellent, the result
is that the candidate is deemed to be excellent in all three areas.
The adherents of irreducibly collectivist reasoning claim that that
the choice between the premise-driven way and the conclusion-driven
way is a choice between submitting to individual reason and submitting
to collective reason. However, both procedures involve a voting
procedure and to that extent involve a joint institutional mechanism
analysable in wholly individualist terms (as per section 3 above). In
addition, both procedures involve a process of reasoning from premises
to a conclusion; however, this process is one of logic, and in the
tenure example it is a process carried out in the heads of the members
of the tenure committee. In the premise-driven procedure the premises
from which each committee member will individually infer the
conclusion that the candidate is excellent in all three areas are
determined by voting, whereas in the case of the conclusion-driven
procedure the conclusion that the candidate is not excellent in all
three areas is inferred from premises that have been individually
chosen. Accordingly, there is no process of collective reasoning as
such in the use of either procedure.



Supposing institutions, in particular, are collective agents there
remains the question of the relationship between these collective
agents and their human members. The favoured relationship, e.g. by
List and Pettit, is that of supervenience. Epstein has provided
detailed arguments against the supervenience thesis. He distinguishes
between what he refers as the grounding and the anchoring of social
phenomena, including institutions and institutional objects, and
utilizes H. L. A. Hart's distinction between primary rules and
secondary rule in doing so (Hart 1961). Roughly speaking, primary
rules directly govern the behaviour of citizens, e.g. laws against
murder. Secondary rules determine what the primary rules are, e.g. the
legislative processes for enacting primary rules. According to
Epstein, the grounds of a primary rule against murder consist of facts
such as intentional killing, whereas secondary rules, e.g. the
legislative enactment process, would anchor the primary rule. Let us
now see how this grounding/anchoring distinction works by way of the
example of the Supreme Court of the US. According to Epstein (2015:
223), the fact that the Supreme Court issues a particular opinion is
grounded in facts such as that its members voted in particular
ways. Moreover, their powers, e.g. to vote, are anchored in part by
the US Constitution and the Judiciary Acts (which established the US
courts). However, says Epstein, some grounding facts are external to
facts about the members of the institution in question, e.g. external
to facts about the justices of the Supreme Court. Therefore, the
actions of a group depend on more than the actions of the members of
the group. For instance, the issuance of an opinion by the Supreme
Court depends on more than the votes and other actions of the justices
of the Supreme Court, it also depends on the constraints on their
actions (Epstein 2015: 227), e.g. constraints imposed by,
i.e. anchored in, the US Constitution and the Judicial Acts. Epstein
takes this dependence of the actions of the Supreme Court on external
facts, and specifically the actions of persons other than the members
of the Supreme Court, to undermine the supervenience claim. This is
plausible. However, since the argument at this point simply assumes
that the Supreme Court per se performs actions, it does not
demonstrate that the actions of the Supreme Court are not simply the
actions of the members of the Supreme Court. For if we assume contra
Epstein that the Supreme Court per se is not an agent and does not
perform actions, then his argument merely demonstrates what is clearly
correct, namely, that the actions of the members of the Supreme Court
are to some extent dependent on the actions of persons other than the
members of the Supreme Court, e.g. the framers of the US Constitution
and of the Judicial Acts. Indeed, arguably, it is the view that
institutions per se are agents that is the root of the problem and the
difficulties identified by Epstein that arise from positing the
supervenience relation merely symptoms. For if institutions are not
agents per se and, therefore, do not perform actions and are not
possessed of mental states, then there is no need to posit this
supervenience relation. 



Another important issue in relation to agency concerns the nature of
the relationship between institutional structure and the agency of
institutional actors (Pleasants 2019). More specifically, a question
arises as to whether or not one of these is logically prior to the
other (or whether neither is). Thus some theorists, e.g. Emile
Durkheim (1964) are held to conceive of structure as sui
generis in relation to individual agency; and indeed, at least in the
case of structuralists such as Althusser (1971), explanatory
of human 'agency'. The proposition of structuralists such
as Althusser is that institutional structures (in the sense of a
structure of social roles and social norms) are a basic, non-reducible
feature of the world and the actions, values, self-images and the like
of individual human agents must conform to these structures because
individual agency, properly understood, is in fact constituted by such
structures. An individual human agent is simply the repository of the
roles and values of the institutions in which the 'agent'
lives his or her life. Other theorists, e.g., arguably Max Weber
(1949) and methodological individualists, conceive of
institutional structure as simply an abstraction from the habitual and
interdependent actions of individual human beings actors. Social
reality is wholly compromised of individual human agents and their
ongoing, patterned interactions; there is no structure as such.
(Theorists such as Durkheim occupy a mid-position in which there is
both sui generis structure and non-reducible agency; such theorists
now confront the problem of conflict between structure and individual
agency--which overrides which?) 



In relation to this issue Anthony Giddens (1976 and 1984) has
attempted to reconcile the felt reality of individual agency with the
apparent need to posit some form of institutional structure that
transcends individual agency.



According to Giddens, structure is both constituted by human agency
and is the medium in which human action takes place (Giddens 1976, p.
121). This seems to mean, firstly, that structure is nothing other
than the repetition over time of the related actions of many
institutional actors. So the structure consists of: (i) the habitual
actions of each institutional agent; (ii) the set of such agents; and
(iii) the relationship of interdependence between the actions of any
one agent and the actions of the other agents. But it means, secondly,
that this repetition over time of the related actions of many agents
provides not just the context, but the framework, within which the
action of a single agent at a particular spatio-temporal point is
performed. Structure qua framework *constrains* any given
agent's action at a particular spatio-temporal point. (In
addition, and as Giddens is at pains to point out, structure qua
framework *enables* various actions not otherwise possible,
e.g. linguistic structure enables speech acts to be performed.)



This seems plausible as far as it goes; however, we are owed an
account of the *interdependence* among the actions of different
agents. On a teleological account of institutions this interdependence
is in large part generated by the *ends* of the institutions.




Here we need to remind ourselves of a characteristic feature of
institutions, namely, their reproductive capacity. Institutions
reproduce themselves, or at least are disposed to do so. On the
teleological account of institutions, this is in large part because
the members of institutions strongly identify with the institutional
ends and social norms that are definitive of those institutions, and
therefore make relatively long term commitments to institutions and
induct others into those institutions.



However, it has been suggested by, for example, Roy Bhaskar (1979: 44)
that this reproduction of institutions is the unintended result of the
free actions of institutional actors in institutional settings. (See
also Merton 1968: Part 1 Section 3.) By way of support for this
proposition Bhaskar claims that people do not marry to reproduce the
nuclear family or work to reproduce the capitalist system. 



The first point to be made by way of response to Bhaskar is that even
if the *reproduction* of an institution was an unintended
consequence of the intentional participation of agents in that
institution it would not follow that those agents did not have various
other institutional outcomes as an end. For example, members of a
business might have the maximisation of profit as an explicit
collective end, even if the reproduction of the company was not
intended by anyone. 



The second point is that having an outcome as an *implicit*
and/or *latent* *collective end* is not equivalent to
individually explicitly intending to bring about that outcome. But it
is the former, and not the latter that is in question. What is the
evidence for the former in relation to Bhaskar's chosen
examples?



Consider a market-based institution, such as a company. Assume that
the owners and managers of this company work to maintain the existence
of their company and--through training, recruitment and so
on--to ensure that it continues beyond their retirement or
resignation. Moreover, assume that in their ongoing interaction with
customers and with other businesses, they knowingly--and in the
case of sales and marketing personnel, intentionally--establish
and maintain specific economic relationships. More generally--let
us assume--they express, often explicitly, not only their
commitment to their own business, but to the market system in general.
Further, let us assume that where appropriate and possible, they
assist in the maintenance and further development of that system, e.g.
by voting for a market oriented political party. Now consider a set of
such companies. Arguably--given these fairly plausible
assumptions--each of owner and manager of any of these companies
has--jointly with the others--an implicit and (much of the
time) latent collective end to reproduce the market system.



Further, there are institutions, such as schools and churches, and
policymaking bodies, such as governments, that are *explicitly*
engaged in the enterprise of reproducing a variety of social
institutions other than themselves. They contribute to the
reproduction of various social institutions by propagating the
"ideology" of these institutions, but also by advocating
and, in the case of government, by implementing specific policies to
ensure the reproduction of these institutions.



Doubtless, unintended consequences--or, more precisely,
consequences not aimed at as an end--have an important role in
the life and for that matter, the death, of institutions (Hirschman
1970). Such consequences might include ones produced by evolutionary
style causal mechanisms, or ones involved in so-called "hidden
hand" mechanisms. (Albeit, as we saw above, "hidden
hand" mechanisms are often the product of deliberate
institutional design, and so their consequences are in a general sense
aimed at by the designers, if not by the participating institutional
actors themselves.)



More specifically, habitual action is a necessary feature of
individual and collective--including institutional--life;
and each single action performed on the basis of a habit, contributes
in turn, and often unintentionally, to the maintenance and
reinforcement of that habit. So the fact that institutional actors
necessarily act in large part on the basis of habit means that many of
their actions unintentionally contribute to the reproduction of the
institution. However, this is consistent with a teleological account
of social institutions--since, as noted above, there are outcomes
other than institutional reproduction, and many of these are outcomes
that are clearly aimed at. Moreover, it is consistent even with a
teleological explanation of the reproduction of social institutions,
since the establishment and *periodic* justificatory review of
habits are themselves susceptible to teleological explanation.