Social & Institutional Change
Complete summary lectures and literature
Week 1 - lecture 1
Institutions are the rules of a game in a society or, more formally, the humanly devised
constraints that shape human interactions (North).
—> institutions make certain behaviour more costly, which a ects rational decision making.
Informal institutions: unwritten, norms, no sanctions by law.
Formal institutions: (written) rules, enforced by law.
Week 2 - lecture 3
Social mechanisms: “social processes having designated consequences of designated parts of
the social structure” (Merton).
—> they constitute a middle ground for social laws and description.
—> the main task of sociology is to identify mechanisms and to establish under which conditions
they ‘survive’ (Merton).
Stinchcombe: mechanisms in a theory are de ned as bits of theory about entities at a di erent
level (e.g. individuals) than the main entities being theorised about (e.g. groups), which serve to
make the higher-level theory more supple, more accurate or more general.
—> e.g. molecules that turn into gas
Probabilistic law: usually only suggests that a relationship is likely to exist, but not why it is likely
to be the case (Hempel).
—> black-box explanations
Rational-choice theory: spells out a detailed mechanism trying to explain the association
(mechanism of generality) (Homans).
Individualistic behaviourism (Coleman): a variable-centred type of theorising that pays little
attention to explanatory mechanisms.
Causal modeling (Coleman): the notion that individual behaviour can and should be explained by
various individual and environmental ‘determinants’, and the purpose of the analysis is to estimate
the causal in uence of the various variables representing these determinants.
Self-ful lling prophecy (Merton): an initially false de nition of a situation invokes behaviour that
eventually m makes the false conception come true (stock market example).
Network di usion (Coleman): networks are important because information from within your
network can become especially important in situations of uncertainty, as compared to clear-cut
situations.
Threshold-based behaviour (Granovetter): an individual’s decision whether or not to participate
in collective behaviour often depends on how many other actors already have decided to
participate.
—> all these theories have the same underlying concept - belief-formation mechanism: an
individual’s actions are in uenced by others.
Macro-micro-macro model (Coleman): macro states at one point in time in uence the behaviour
of individual actors, and these actions add up to new macro-states at a later time.
Arrow 1 = situational mechanism:
Link a social structure to the beliefs, desires and opportunities of individual actors.
Arrow 2 = individual action mechanism:
How a speci c combination of individual desires, beliefs and action opportunities generates a
speci c action.
fi fi fffifl fl fi fi ff fl ff
, Arrow 3 = transformational mechanism:
A number of individuals interact with one another and the speci c
mechanism describes how these individual actions are transformed
into a collective outcome (sometimes unintended and unexpected by
all actors).
Mechanism-based explanations are characterised by three core features:
1 - the principle of direct causality - opening up the black-box.
2 - the principle of limited scope - explanations tailored for a limited range of phenomena.
3 - the principal of methodological individualism - referring directly to causes and
consequences of individual action oriented to the behaviour of others.
Complications:
• Not all explanatory dependencies are straightforwardly causal.
• There are background conditions and they might consist of multiple causal pathways.
• Heterogeneity of agents.
• Individuals’ actions in uencing each other: interdependency.
Week 3 - lecture 4
Hobbes: social order is possible through the Leviathan: some entity that has a monopoly on
power and maintains peace/cooperation (such as the state, self-interest, social norms, fairness).
Prisoner’s dilemma: core message: it cannot be taken for granted that (larger groups of)
individuals will spontaneously cooperate with each other for the public good, even when it is in
their best interest to do so.
Cooperator = someone who pays a cost for another individual to receive a bene t.
Defector = has no costs and does not deal out bene ts.
5 mechanisms for the evolution of cooperation:
1) Kin selection: helping your family because it is your family and it helps spread your genes.
2) Direct reciprocity: you’re helping someone & that person will help you at a later time.
—> related to the prisoner’s dilemma (repeated version)
• Tit-for-tat - cannot correct mistakes
• Generous tit-for-tat - e cient catalyst of cooperation when defectors are dominant
• Win-stay, lose-shift - more robust & better to maintain cooperation
3) Indirect reciprocity: you’re helping someone and a random other person will help you at a
later time, because you have a good reputation.
—> also leads to the evolution of morality and social norms
—> reputation allows evolution of cooperation by indirect reciprocity
—> people who are more helpful are more likely to receive help.
4) Network reciprocity: individuals are connected to some others in a network, they work
together and help each other. They are protected against defectors because they help each
other.
5) Group selection: groups in which individuals work together have a better chance of surviving.
—> pure cooperator groups grow faster than pure defector groups (favouring cooperators)
—> in any mixed group defectors reproduce faster than cooperators (favouring defectors)
Game theory: study of decision making in settings of strategic interdependence, payo
depending on self and at least one other person.
—> only focuses on what is most bene cial to oneself, not on what is less bene cial for the other.
Nash Equilibrium: the strategy combination in which no player can get a better payo by
switching to some other strategy while the other player does not change her decision.
flffi fi fi fi fifi ffff
Complete summary lectures and literature
Week 1 - lecture 1
Institutions are the rules of a game in a society or, more formally, the humanly devised
constraints that shape human interactions (North).
—> institutions make certain behaviour more costly, which a ects rational decision making.
Informal institutions: unwritten, norms, no sanctions by law.
Formal institutions: (written) rules, enforced by law.
Week 2 - lecture 3
Social mechanisms: “social processes having designated consequences of designated parts of
the social structure” (Merton).
—> they constitute a middle ground for social laws and description.
—> the main task of sociology is to identify mechanisms and to establish under which conditions
they ‘survive’ (Merton).
Stinchcombe: mechanisms in a theory are de ned as bits of theory about entities at a di erent
level (e.g. individuals) than the main entities being theorised about (e.g. groups), which serve to
make the higher-level theory more supple, more accurate or more general.
—> e.g. molecules that turn into gas
Probabilistic law: usually only suggests that a relationship is likely to exist, but not why it is likely
to be the case (Hempel).
—> black-box explanations
Rational-choice theory: spells out a detailed mechanism trying to explain the association
(mechanism of generality) (Homans).
Individualistic behaviourism (Coleman): a variable-centred type of theorising that pays little
attention to explanatory mechanisms.
Causal modeling (Coleman): the notion that individual behaviour can and should be explained by
various individual and environmental ‘determinants’, and the purpose of the analysis is to estimate
the causal in uence of the various variables representing these determinants.
Self-ful lling prophecy (Merton): an initially false de nition of a situation invokes behaviour that
eventually m makes the false conception come true (stock market example).
Network di usion (Coleman): networks are important because information from within your
network can become especially important in situations of uncertainty, as compared to clear-cut
situations.
Threshold-based behaviour (Granovetter): an individual’s decision whether or not to participate
in collective behaviour often depends on how many other actors already have decided to
participate.
—> all these theories have the same underlying concept - belief-formation mechanism: an
individual’s actions are in uenced by others.
Macro-micro-macro model (Coleman): macro states at one point in time in uence the behaviour
of individual actors, and these actions add up to new macro-states at a later time.
Arrow 1 = situational mechanism:
Link a social structure to the beliefs, desires and opportunities of individual actors.
Arrow 2 = individual action mechanism:
How a speci c combination of individual desires, beliefs and action opportunities generates a
speci c action.
fi fi fffifl fl fi fi ff fl ff
, Arrow 3 = transformational mechanism:
A number of individuals interact with one another and the speci c
mechanism describes how these individual actions are transformed
into a collective outcome (sometimes unintended and unexpected by
all actors).
Mechanism-based explanations are characterised by three core features:
1 - the principle of direct causality - opening up the black-box.
2 - the principle of limited scope - explanations tailored for a limited range of phenomena.
3 - the principal of methodological individualism - referring directly to causes and
consequences of individual action oriented to the behaviour of others.
Complications:
• Not all explanatory dependencies are straightforwardly causal.
• There are background conditions and they might consist of multiple causal pathways.
• Heterogeneity of agents.
• Individuals’ actions in uencing each other: interdependency.
Week 3 - lecture 4
Hobbes: social order is possible through the Leviathan: some entity that has a monopoly on
power and maintains peace/cooperation (such as the state, self-interest, social norms, fairness).
Prisoner’s dilemma: core message: it cannot be taken for granted that (larger groups of)
individuals will spontaneously cooperate with each other for the public good, even when it is in
their best interest to do so.
Cooperator = someone who pays a cost for another individual to receive a bene t.
Defector = has no costs and does not deal out bene ts.
5 mechanisms for the evolution of cooperation:
1) Kin selection: helping your family because it is your family and it helps spread your genes.
2) Direct reciprocity: you’re helping someone & that person will help you at a later time.
—> related to the prisoner’s dilemma (repeated version)
• Tit-for-tat - cannot correct mistakes
• Generous tit-for-tat - e cient catalyst of cooperation when defectors are dominant
• Win-stay, lose-shift - more robust & better to maintain cooperation
3) Indirect reciprocity: you’re helping someone and a random other person will help you at a
later time, because you have a good reputation.
—> also leads to the evolution of morality and social norms
—> reputation allows evolution of cooperation by indirect reciprocity
—> people who are more helpful are more likely to receive help.
4) Network reciprocity: individuals are connected to some others in a network, they work
together and help each other. They are protected against defectors because they help each
other.
5) Group selection: groups in which individuals work together have a better chance of surviving.
—> pure cooperator groups grow faster than pure defector groups (favouring cooperators)
—> in any mixed group defectors reproduce faster than cooperators (favouring defectors)
Game theory: study of decision making in settings of strategic interdependence, payo
depending on self and at least one other person.
—> only focuses on what is most bene cial to oneself, not on what is less bene cial for the other.
Nash Equilibrium: the strategy combination in which no player can get a better payo by
switching to some other strategy while the other player does not change her decision.
flffi fi fi fi fifi ffff
