Understanding Institutions: The Science and Philosophy of Living Together

Social ontology is a meeting ground for travellers of various disciplines from all directions. The perspectives are as diverse as modelling social phenomena in game theory, explaining cooperation using theoretical biology, drawing on metaphysics to clarify the nature of groups, or criticizing political theory with accounts of gender and power. Francesco Guala achieves similar breadth in his book. Understanding Institutions illustrates how institutions emerge, how they maintain their existence, how their names acquire meaning, how their nature can be investigated, and how they change and cease to exist. Guala introduces the reader to coordination games, to Ian Hacking’s account of social kinds, and to different views of social construction. To non-specialists, the book is attractive because Guala writes so accessibly, inviting his readers to join him on an inspiring journey through some of the major issues in the field. To specialists, Guala instructively outlines a coherent overall view on the nature of our social world and how this world can be explored. The book is a reminder of the deep relations between seemingly disparate issues. Understanding Institutions has two parts. In the first part entitled “Unification,” Guala presents his account of institutions as rules-in-equilibrium that he has developed together with Frank Hindriks. In the second part entitled “Application,” Guala explores the implications of this account on the methods of social science, on the demarcation between the social and natural science, and on the changing meaning of an institution in the example of “marriage.” Wedged between these two parts is an “Interlude” of two chapters dealing with theories of mindreading and collective intentions. Guala pursues three main questions in this book. First, what are institutions? His answer to this first question is the rules-in-equilibrium approach to which I turn shortly. The second is how can social scientists investigate institutions? Guala defends a kind of naturalism, as I will also explain. Third, how can institutions change? Here Guala argues that institutions appear to change because we never conclusively know what institutions are in the first place. These three questions build on one another, so combining them in a book makes good sense.