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ting agents use the rules and resources that make up structures, and in
doing so, they produce and reproduce such structures. The constitution
of agents and structures are not two independently given sets of phe-
nomena, a dualism, but represent a duality . . . the structural properties of
social systems are both medium and outcome of the practices they recur-
sively organize (Giddens, 1984, pp. 25 6). Structure, rules, resources and
roles only exist in the day to day routines of people ( Jackson 2005), while
interaction between agents is framed by the rules and resources that make
up structures. According to Giddens, these are recurrent social practices
where individual and society meet and in which both are constituted.
In Archer s opinion, Giddens fails in his attempt to describe the
interactive relationship between agency and structure. In the individu-
alistic perspective, structure is reduced to agency while the structural
approach reduces agency to structure. Giddens, in Archer s estimation,
fails because structuration theory deprives both elements of their relative
autonomy, not through reducing one to the other, but by compacting
the two together inseparably (Archer 1988, p. 688). If Archer is right,
the problem with Giddens s theory is that, structure and agency being
inseparable, one cannot conceptualize institutional change in terms of
interactions between structure and agency.
Moreover, if not compacted, attempts at bridging agency and structure
tend to assume the compatibility of agency and structure. Such compat-
ibility is said to imply that institutions are ontologically indistinct from
behaviour in the sense that institutions are merely mental constructs, which
have no ontological status apart from behaviour.
Thus, for example, Neale (1987, p. 1184) claimed An institution is a
mental construct . . . the components of an institution may be observed,
but an institution itself cannot be observed as a whole. Rather, what one
can observe are the activities of people in situations. A similar stance is
taken by Sjöstrand (1993, p. 9) who defined an institution as a human
mental construct for a coherent system of shared (enforced) norms that
regulate individual interactions in recurrent situations . . . institutions are
not objective phenomena but mental constructions of human beings in
their (inter)actions (compare Nelson and Sampat 2001).
Structure, Agency and the Role of Values 35
A second view suggests that behaviour is the reproduction of institutional
patterns. For example, in Parsons s structural functionalistic approach,
society is taken as an organic whole comprised of interdependent, func-
tional parts, each contributing to the maintenance and integration of
society. Stability and cohesion, based on a consensus of values and norms
within which individuals are socialized through institutional arrange-
ments, are taken as characteristic of the normal condition of the social
system. Reasoning from this social system perspective, Parsons (1951)
and Parsons and Shil (1951) argued that human actions are embedded
in an institutional system and therefore follow patterns in accordance
with norms directed at the preservation of that order. Social order may
be said to be secured to the extent that those actions are institutionalized,
that is, sanctioned by the social system and internalized by individuals.
This institutionalized system of norms is an expression of the consensus
about what is just, good and desirable (values). Ultimately in Parsons s
conception, it is the common value system, the normative structure of
society, that makes social order possible. Parsons s model has been criti-
cized for assuming a common framework of shared values and norms
and for its oversocialized conception of man (Wrong 1961).
A third position is one in which some (sequential) combination of these
two possibilities is postulated. In The Social Construction of Reality (1966)
Berger and Luckmann, for example, argue that institutions are the prod-
uct of a dynamic (or dialectic) process in which interactions between
actors become habitualized and patterned when expectations and inter-
pretations of behaviour become generalized through negotiations. These
evolving patterns in human interactions develop into templates for
action and actor which makes it unnecessary to define each situation
anew and, in limiting choice, provide stability and predictability. In this
process the objectivity of institutional arrangements hardens as indi-
viduals internalize these objective social realities, take them for granted
and recreate them in their ongoing interactions.
Defining institutions as systems of established and prevalent social
rules that structure social interactions , Hodgson (2006, p. 2) criticizes
attempts to define institutions as mental constructs that have no onto-
logical status separate from behaviour. They are misleading in suggesting
that institutions no longer existed if their associated behaviours were
interrupted (ibid., p. 3), even though some frequency in behaviour is
likely to be required and institutions are only observable through mani-
fest behaviour. Wilson (2006) further explains that the definition of
institutions as behaviours is the legacy of the positivist twist in institu-
tionalism to operationalize allegedly unscientific concepts by reducing
36 Institutions, Communication and Values
unobservables such as motives and values into empirically manifest
behaviour.
In this chapter, I also draw attention to another line of criticism. The
problem with defining institutions in terms of behaviour, I submit, is that
it predefines the nature of institutional change. If behaviour is the repro-
duction of institutions, institutional change takes place at the level of the
institution, driven by autonomous or exogenous processes, such as popu-
lation growth or technological progress, inducing behavioural responses
to a changing environment. If, on the other hand, institutions are merely
mental constructs, institutional change is seen to result from the chang-
ing preferences and/or expectations of individuals. This way the nature of
institutional change is conditioned by the concept of institutions and the
agency structure debate is reproduced at a different level of aggregation.
Only if institutions are seen as distinct from behaviour, can both struc-
ture and agency properly be said to induce change. For the true hallmark
of a solution to the structure agency issue is that [i]nstitutions mold, and
are molded by, human action (Hodgson 1998, p. 20). Even if it is recog-
nized that a theory of institutional change requires an adequate concept
of the individual as well as of an institution, contributions are often seri-
ously unbalanced; some are strong on institutions (as socially-embedded
systems of rules) at the same time as they are weak on the concept of the
individual (stimulus-response model or habit/instinct psychology).
In our view, thus, institutions are irreducible to behaviour. The irre-
ducibility of both institutions and behaviour to one another implies
the possibilities of tensions. These tensions are permanently potential
as discrepancies between what is prescribed by institutions possibly
in specific situations where a number of institutions come together in a
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