> Applying the concept of evolution to institutions is something that I have
> been thinking about - it has some strenghts, but also weaknesses and dangers.
> Society is not a biological, transfered concepts are metaphors to be treated
> very cautiously. To me the concept of evolution depends
> on having an identifyable thing which changes incrementally by virtue of some
> mechanism. This mechanism reponds to changes in the enviroment be selecting
> among potential charateristics of the thing which evolves. Biological
> evolution consists of a thing called a species making incremental changes by
> virtue of natural selection. It is this theory that has proven so powerful in
> the life sciences, not a more generic notion of evolution as changes in a
> system responding to changes in its environment.
> To apply this to institutions is difficult. First, what is evolving? A
> specific rule? Then how is it that the new rule is an evolved version of the
> earlier rule rather than just another rule? If the evolving thing is a larger
> unit such as an organization or a geographical unit then we are on firmer
> ground because we can identify the evolving thing. But that thing is now much
> more than just institutions. It selects its institutions according to some
> rule making mechanism but these rule making mechansisms are not limited to a
> particular logic of rule making in the same way that natural selection must
> select among available genetic choices.
> However, there may be a social scientific logic that governs this rule
> selection. Douglass North offers us the logic of path dependence and minimizin
g
> transaction costs. Path dependence limits the selection of new institutions
> while transaction costs play the role of selecting mechanism. Path dependence
> is essentially the conservatism that is built in to the changing process by th
e
> way that the existing institutions have governed learning and the interests of
> actors. This is the strongest version of evolving institutions that I know
> of. But there is a lot about it I don't like, particularly in the understandin
g
> of the role of transaction costs. But it is a helpful theory.
> One cost we pay for the application of evolution to institutions is that i
t
> can only describe incremental social change and not rapid social change. Path
> dependence does its inhibiting work in most situations, but there are some in
> which it fails. Evolution in the life sciences describes change in general,
> applied to social science it describes only particular, albeit common
> situations. This is a danger because we are used to using the concept as a
> general one. Viewing Russia as an evolved Soviet Union seems to me stretching
> a point, it is possible but other approaches would be stronger.
> Another difficulty is that it is the organizations or geographical
> units that are competing and changing, not the institutions themselves.
> Changing institutions is just one mechanism that is available to these groups
> in competition. Thus the analysis of the evolution of institutions becomes
> somewhat befuddled.
> A third problem I have, particularly at the world-system level, is that
> the use of concepts like evolution, competition and selection takes on an
> almost euphemistic air. Captialism did not outcompete other systems because o
f
> its more evolved institutions - people from capitalist societies conquered
> people from non-capitalist societies and forced them to change their rules.
> On the whole I think evolution can be made to describe social phenomenon.
> But biological metaphors have their limits and conceptual traps and we might b
e
> better off in social science using language of our own specific to what we
> study.
>
> - Doug Wilson wilsond9@student.msu.edu
>
>
>
>
>
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > There has been some discussion about evolution and more recently about
> > the unthinking of politics/social/economic realms of thought. I would
> > like to post some ideas about evolution, in the way I think
> > institutions (as the rules of the game) evolve.
> >
> > Evolution doesn't have to be teleological, except for the attempt to
> > surviving. A certain group evolves not to become something "better"
> > but to remain. Evolution is not the result of the willing of the group
> > but of the combination of the group and its environment. If the
> > environment changes, the probabilities of surviving for each member of
> > the group also change. Evolution, thus, is the result of the
> > environmental changes and the natural diversity of the group.
> >
> > If we think of institutions as the mentioned group, evolution becomes
> > a very useful concept. Any rule (or set of rules) is confronted with
> > the environment of the group that defined it (let aside the creation
> > of institutions for a moment). As the environment changes, the rule
> > "evolves" since individual and group interpretations of the rule also
> > change. What we have is a rule that resembles the original one, but
> > has changed enough to be considered as different.
> >
> > Now, if we introduce this concept of institutions as the rules of the
> > game, that once created evolve independently of the will of the
> > social group that created it, it is quite easier to unthink the
> > pol-eco-soc separation...
> >
> > Comments?
> >
> > Macario
> >
>
>