This is the first book to present a synthesis of rational choice theory and sociological perspectives for the analysis of social institutions. The origin of social institutions is an old concern in social theory. Currently it has re-emerged as one of the most intensely debated issues in social science. Among economists and rational choice theorists, there is growing awareness that most, if not all, of the social outcomes that are of interest to explain are at least partly a function of institutional constraints. Yet the role of institutions is negligible both in general equilibrium theory and in most neoclassical economic models. There is a burgeoning substantive interest in institutions ranging from social movements, to formal organizations, to states, and even international regimes. Rational choice theorists have made great strides in elucidating the effects of institutions on a variety of social outcomes, but they have paid insufficient attention to the social dynamics that lead to the emergence of these institutions. Typically, these institutions have been assumed to be a given, rather than considered as outcomes requiring explanation in their own right. Sociological theorists, in contrast, have long appreciated the role of social structural constraints in the determination of outcomes but have neglected the role of individual agents. Michael Hechter is professor emeritus in the department of Sociology at the University of Washington. He is the author of numerous books. He became an Elected Fellow to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2004 and has been featured in Who's Who. He is also currently on editorial boards for a numerous amount of journals. Karl-Dieter Opp is professor of sociology at Univesitat Leipzig. He has been a Fellow of the European Academy of Sociology since 1999 and has been member of the Council and Treasurer since 2000. He is also current on the advisory board for the magazine Mind and Society. Reinhard Wippler is professor of theoretical sociology at the University of Utrecht and scientific director of the Interuniversity Center for Sociological Theory and Methodology.

Critiquing the State-centric and legalistic approach to implementing human rights, this book illustrates the efficacy of relying upon social institutions.

Important scholars offer new perspectives on the formation and growth of social institutions

Seumas Miller provides an exciting new philosophical theory of contemporary social institutions and the ethical challenges they confront.

In recent years 'the New Institutionalism' has focused more on organizations in their social and cultural environments than on societal-level institutional systems. Thus, missing from these studies has been a larger sociological analysis of institutions, per se. In his newest book, leading social theorist Jonathan H. Turner offers a creative, richly grounded reinterpretation of social evolution. He ressurrects a level of analysis undertaken by earlier functionalist theorists, but with a new-found emphasis--that of discovering the larger forces driving the formation of human institutional systems. Only by exploring the larger macro-dynamics can the institutions of economy, kinship, religion, polity, law, and education be fully understood, as Turner persuasively shows in this magesterial explication of twenty millenia of human social life.

This book shows how the individual constructs a self from the thousands of colloquial identities provided by a society's culture, and reveals how the individual actualizes and sustains an integrated and stable self while navigating the sometimes treacherous waters of everyday institutional life.

This book uses game theory to analyse the creation, evolution and function of economic and social institutions. The author illustrates his analysis by describing the organic or unplanned evolution of institutions such as the conventions of war, the use of money, property rights and oligopolistic pricing conventions. Professor Schotter begins by linking his work with the ideas of the philosophers Rawls, Nozick and Lewis. Institutions are regarded as regularities in the behaviour of social agents, which the agents themselves tacitly create to solve a wide variety of recurrent problems. The repetitive nature of the problems permits them to be described as a recurrent game or 'supergame.' The agents use these regularities as informational devices to supplement the information contained in competitive prices. The final chapter explores the applicability of this theory, first by relating it to previous work on the theory of teams, hierarchies, and non-maximizing decision theory, and then by using it to provide a new approach to a variety of questions both within and outside economics.