Explores the relationship between institutions and the maintenance of social order

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.

This book integrates the problem of violence into a larger framework, showing how economic and political behavior are closely linked.

A thorough critique of theories of institutional change followed by the development of a new theory emphasising the role of distributional conflict in the emergence of social institutions.

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.

Neoclassical economics as-sumes that people are highly rational and can reason their way through even the most complex economic problems. In Individual Strategy and Social Structure, Peyton Young argues for a more realistic view in which people have a limited understanding of their environment, are sometimes short-sighted, and occasionally act in perverse ways. He shows how the cumulative experiences of many such individuals coalesce over time into customs, norms, and institutions that govern economic and social life. He develops a theory that predicts how such institutions evolve and characterizes their welfare properties. The ideas are illustrated through a variety of examples, including patterns of residential segregation, rules of the road, claims on property, forms of economic contracts, and norms of equity. The book relies on new results in evolutionary game theory and stochastic dynamical systems theory, many of them originated by the author. It can serve as an introductory text, or be read on its own as a contribution to the study of economic and social institutions.