15
D I V E R S I T Y A N D S T R U C T U R E D I N T E R A C T I O N S
Exogenous Variables
Interactions
Outcomes
Evaluative
Criteria
Biophysical/
Material Conditions
Attributes of
Community
Rules
Action
Situations
Participants
Action Arena
Figure 1.2 A framework for institutional analysis. Source: Adapted from E. Os-
trom, Gardner, and Walker 1994, 37.
chapter 3, showing how this holon can be operationalized in an experi-
mental laboratory. In chapter 4, we will zoom in to unpack the concept
of a participant and discuss the puzzles and possibilities available to ani-
mate the actor. But first, let’s use zoom out to examine the variables that
are treated as exogenous when examining an action arena (but may them-
selves be an outcome of another action arena). Let’s look at a broader
overview of the IAD conceptual map.
Zooming Out to an Overview of the IAD Framework
An institutional analyst can take two additional steps after an effort is
made to understand the initial structure of an action arena leading to a
particular pattern of interactions and outcomes. One step moves outward
and inquires into the exogenous factors that affect the structure of an
action arena. From this vantage point, any particular action arena is now
viewed as a set of dependent variables. The factors affecting the structure
of an action arena include three clusters of variables: (1) the rules used
by participants to order their relationships, (2) the attributes of the bio-
physical world that are acted upon in these arenas, and (3) the structure
of the more general community within which any particular arena is
placed (see Kiser and Ostrom 1982). The next section of this chapter
provides a brief introduction to this first step (see the left side of figure
1.2). How rules influence the action arena will then be discussed in much
more depth in chapters 5, 6, and 7.
The second step also moves outward—but to the “other side” of a partic-
ular action arena—to look at how action arenas are linked together either
sequentially or simultaneously. This step will be discussed in the last section
of chapter 2 after discussion of the components of action situations.
16
C H A P T E R O N E
Viewing Action Arenas as Dependent Variables
Underlying the way analysts conceptualize action situations and the parti-
cipants that interact in them are implicit assumptions about the rules par-
ticipants use to order their relationships, about attributes of the biophysi-
cal world, and about the nature of the community within which the arena
occurs. Some analysts are not interested in the role of these underlying
variables and focus only on a particular arena whose structure is given.
On the other hand, institutional analysts may be more interested in one
factor affecting the structure of arenas than they are interested in others.
Anthropologists and sociologists tend to be more interested in how shared
or divisive value systems in a community affect the ways humans organize
their relationships with one another. Environmentalists tend to focus on
various ways that physical and biological systems interact and create op-
portunities or constraints on the situations human beings face. Political
scientists tend to focus on how specific combinations of rules affect incen-
tives. Rules, the biophysical and material world, and the nature of the
community all jointly affect the types of actions that individuals can take,
the benefits and costs of these actions and potential outcomes, and the
likely outcomes achieved.
The Concept of Rules
The concept of rules is central to the analysis of institutions (Hodgson
2004a). The term rules, however, is used by scholars to refer to many
concepts with quite diverse meanings. In an important philosophical
treatment of rules, Max Black (1962) identified four different usages of
the term in everyday conversations. According to Black, the word rule is
used to denote regulations, instructions, precepts, and principles. When
used in its regulation sense, rules refer to something “laid down by an
authority (a legislature, judge, magistrate, board of directors, university
president, parent) as required of certain persons (or, alternatively, forbid-
den or permitted)” (115). The example of a rule in the regulation sense
that Black uses is: “The dealer at bridge must bid first.” When using rule
in its regulation sense, one can meaningfully refer to activities such as the
rule “being announced, put into effect, enforced (energetically, strictly,
laxly, invariably, occasionally), disobeyed, broken, rescinded, changed,
revoked, reinstated” (109).
When the term rule is used to denote an instruction, it is closer in mean-
ing to an effective strategy for how to solve a problem. An example of
this usage is, “In solving quartic equations, first eliminate the cubic term”
(110). When speaking about a rule in this sense, one would not talk about
17
D I V E R S I T Y A N D S T R U C T U R E D I N T E R A C T I O N S
a rule being enforced, rescinded, reinstated, or any of the other activities
relevant to regulation. When rule denotes a precept, the term is being used
as a maxim for prudential or moral behavior. An example would be: “A
good rule is: to put charity ahead of justice” (111). Again, one would not
speak of enforcing, rescinding, or reinstating a rule in the precept sense.
The fourth sense in which the term rule is used in everyday language is
to describe a law or principle. An example of this usage is: “Cyclones
rotate clockwise, anticyclones anticlockwise” (113). Principles or physi-
cal laws are subject to empirical test, and as such truth values can be
ascribed to them. But physical laws are not put into effect, broken, or
rescinded.
Social scientists employ all four of the uses of the term rule that Black
identifies—and others as well (see discussion in chapter 5). Scholars en-
gaged in institutional analysis frequently use the term to denote a regula-
tion. The definition of rules used in this book is close to what Black identi-
fied as the regulation sense. Rules can be thought of as the set of
instructions for creating an action situation in a particular environment.
In some ways, rules have an analogous role to that of genes. Genes com-
bine to build a phenotype. Rules combine to build the structure of an
action situation. The property rights that participants hold in diverse set-
tings are a result of the underlying set of rules-in-use (Libecap 1989).
Rules, in the instruction sense, can be thought of as the strategies
adopted by participants within ongoing situations. I will consistently use
the term strategy rather than rule for individual plans of action. Rules
in the precept sense are part of the generally accepted moral fabric of a
community (Allen 2005). We refer to these cultural prescriptions as
norms. Rules in the principle sense are physical laws.
Until recently, rules have not been a central focus of most of the social
sciences. Even in game theory where “the rules of the game” seem to play
an important role, there has not been much interest in examining where
rules come from or how they change. Game-theoretical rules include all
physical laws that constrain a situation as well as rules devised by humans
to structure a situation. The rules of the game—including both physical
and institutional factors—structure the game itself, but have been irrele-
vant to many game theorists once a game can be unambiguously repre-
sented. An influential contributor to the development of game theory, An-
atol Rapoport (1966, 18) stated this distinction very clearly: “Rules are
important only to the extent that they allow the outcomes resulting from
the choices of participants to be unambiguously specified. . . . Any other
game with possibly quite different rules but leading to the same relations
among the choices and the outcomes is considered equivalent to the game
in question. In short, game theory is concerned with rules only to the
extent that the rules help define the choice situation and the outcomes
Dostları ilə paylaş: |