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Social norms are shared standards of acceptable behavior by groups. Social norms can both be informal understandings that govern the behavior of members of a society, as well as be codified into rules and laws. Social normative influences or social norms, are deemed to be powerful drivers of human behavioural changes and well organized and incorporated by major theories which explain human behaviour. Institutions are composed of multiple norms. Norms are shared social beliefs about behavior; thus, they are distinct from "ideas", "attitudes", and "values", which can be held privately, and which do not necessarily concern behavior. Norms are contingent on context, social group, and historical circumstances.
International Relations (IR) are the interactions among sovereign states. The scientific study of those interactions is called international studies, international politics, or international affairs. In a broader sense, it concerns all activities among states—such as war, diplomacy, trade, and foreign policy—as well as relations with and among other international actors, such as intergovernmental organizations (IGOs), international nongovernmental organizations (INGOs), international legal bodies, and multinational corporations (MNCs). There are several schools of thought within IR, of which the most prominent are realism, liberalism, and constructivism.
Social theories are analytical frameworks, or paradigms, that are used to study and interpret social phenomena. A tool used by social scientists, social theories relate to historical debates over the validity and reliability of different methodologies, the primacy of either structure or agency, as well as the relationship between contingency and necessity. Social theory in an informal nature, or authorship based outside of academic social and political science, may be referred to as "social criticism" or "social commentary", or "cultural criticism" and may be associated both with formal cultural and literary scholarship, as well as other non-academic or journalistic forms of writing.
New institutionalism is an approach to the study of institutions that focuses on the constraining and enabling effects of formal and informal rules on the behavior of individuals and groups. New institutionalism traditionally encompasses three major strands: sociological institutionalism, rational choice institutionalism, and historical institutionalism. New institutionalism originated in work by sociologist John Meyer published in 1977.
In the social sciences there is a standing debate over the primacy of structure or agency in shaping human behaviour. Structure is the recurrent patterned arrangements which influence or limit the choices and opportunities available. Agency is the capacity of individuals to act independently and to make their own free choices. The structure versus agency debate may be understood as an issue of socialization against autonomy in determining whether an individual acts as a free agent or in a manner dictated by social structure.
Comparative politics is a field in political science characterized either by the use of the comparative method or other empirical methods to explore politics both within and between countries. Substantively, this can include questions relating to political institutions, political behavior, conflict, and the causes and consequences of economic development. When applied to specific fields of study, comparative politics may be referred to by other names, such as comparative government.
In sociology, an isomorphism is a similarity of the processes or structure of one organization to those of another, be it the result of imitation or independent development under similar constraints. The concept of institutional isomorphism was primarily developed by Paul DiMaggio and Walter Powell. The concept appears in their 1983 paper The iron cage revisited: institutional isomorphism and collective rationality in organizational fields. The term is borrowed from the mathematical concept of isomorphism.
In sociology and organizational studies, institutional theory is a theory on the deeper and more resilient aspects of social structure. It considers the processes by which structures, including schemes, rules, norms, and routines, become established as authoritative guidelines for social behavior. Different components of institutional theory explain how these elements are created, diffused, adopted, and adapted over space and time; and how they fall into decline and disuse.
Historical institutionalism (HI) is a new institutionalist social science approach that emphasizes how timing, sequences and path dependence affect institutions, and shape social, political, economic behavior and change. Unlike functionalist theories and some rational choice approaches, historical institutionalism tends to emphasize that many outcomes are possible, small events and flukes can have large consequences, actions are hard to reverse once they take place, and that outcomes may be inefficient. A critical juncture may set in motion events that are hard to reverse, because of issues related to path dependency. Historical institutionalists tend to focus on history to understand why specific events happen.
In international relations (IR), constructivism is a social theory that asserts that significant aspects of international relations are shaped by ideational factors. The most important ideational factors are those that are collectively held; these collectively held beliefs construct the interests and identities of actors.
The English School of international relations theory maintains that there is a 'society of states' at the international level, despite the condition of anarchy. The English school stands for the conviction that ideas, rather than simply material capabilities, shape the conduct of international politics, and therefore deserve analysis and critique. In this sense it is similar to constructivism, though the English School has its roots more in world history, international law and political theory, and is more open to normative approaches than is generally the case with constructivism.
Michael Nathan Barnett is a professor of international relations at George Washington University's Elliott School of International Affairs. Known for his Constructivist approach, his scholarship and research has been in the areas of international organizations, international relations theory, and Middle Eastern politics.
Victor G. Nee is an American sociologist and professor at Cornell University, known for his work in economic sociology, inequality and immigration. He published a book with Richard Alba entitled Remaking the American Mainstream proposing a neo-assimilation theory to explain the assimilation of post-1965 immigrant minorities and the second generation. In 2012, he published Capitalism from Below co-authored with Sonja Opper examining the rise of economic institutions of capitalism in China. Nee is the Frank and Rosa Rhodes Professor, and Director of the Center for the Study of Economy and Society at Cornell University. Nee received the John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship in 2007, and has been a visiting fellow at the Russell Sage Foundation in New York ( 1994–1995), and the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences (1996-1997). He was awarded an honorary doctorate in Economics by Lund University in Sweden in 2013.
Vivien A. Schmidt is an American academic of political science and international relations. At Boston University, she is the Jean Monnet Chair of European Integration Professor of International Relations in the Pardee School of Global Studies, and Professor of Political Science. She is known for her work on political economy, policy analysis, democratic theory, and new institutionalism. She is a 2018 recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship and has been named a Chevalier in the French Legion of Honor.
Martha Finnemore is an American constructivist scholar of international relations, and University Professor at the Elliott School of International Affairs at George Washington University. She is considered among the most influential international relations scholars. Her scholarship has highlighted the role of norms and culture in international politics, as well as shown that international organizations are consequential and purposive social agents in world politics that can shape state interests.
John Wilfred Meyer is a sociologist and emeritus professor at Stanford University. Beginning in the 1970s and continuing to the present day, Meyer has contributed fundamental ideas to the field of sociology, especially in the areas of education, organizations, and global and transnational sociology. He is best known for the development of the neo-institutional perspective on globalization, known as world society or World Polity Theory. In 2015, he became the recipient of American Sociological Association's highest honor - W.E.B. Du Bois Career of Distinguished Scholarship Award.
Rational choice institutionalism (RCI) is a theoretical approach to the study of institutions arguing that actors use institutions to maximize their utility, and that institutions affect rational individual behavior. Rational choice institutionalism arose initially from the study of congressional behaviour in the U.S. in the late 1970s. Influential early RCI scholarship was done by political economists at California Institute of Technology, University of Rochester, and Washington University. It employs analytical tools borrowed from neo-classical economics to explain how institutions are created, the behaviour of political actors within it, and the outcome of strategic interaction.
Sociological institutionalism is a form of new institutionalism that concerns "the way in which institutions create meaning for individuals." Its explanations are constructivist in nature. According to Ronald L. Jepperson and John W. Meyer, Sociological institutionalism
treats the “actorhood” of modern individuals and organizations as itself constructed out of cultural materials – and treats contemporary institutional systems as working principally by creating and legitimating agentic actors with appropriate perspectives, motives, and agendas. The scholars who have developed this perspective have been less inclined to emphasize actors’ use of institutions and more inclined to envision institutional forces as producing and using actors. By focusing on the evolving construction and reconstruction of the actors of modern society, institutionalists can better explain the dramatic social changes of the contemporary period – why these changes cut across social contexts and functional settings, and why they often become worldwide in character.
Patricia H. Thornton is an American organizational theorist, and Grand Challenge Initiative Professor of Sociology and Entrepreneurship at Texas A&M University as well as Adjunct Associate Professor of Business Administration at the Fuqua School of Business at Duke University. She is known for her work on "the sociology of entrepreneurship" and "the Institutional Logics Perspective."
Georg Krücken is a German sociologist and higher education researcher. He is director of the International Center for Higher Education Research Kassel (INCHER-Kassel) at the University of Kassel.
References
- 1 2 John Boli; Selina Gallo-Cruz & Matt Mathias (2010). "World Society, World-Polity Theory, and International Relations". Oxford Research Encyclopedia of International Studies. doi:10.1093/acrefore/9780190846626.013.495. ISBN 9780190846626.
- 1 2 Connie L McNeely (2012). "World Polity Theory". The Wiley-Blackwell Encyclopedia of Globalization (Abstract). doi:10.1002/9780470670590.wbeog834. ISBN 9780470670590.
- 1 2 3 4 5 Frank J Lechner; John Boli, eds. (2011). The Globalization Reader (Fourth ed.). Wiley-Blackwell. p. 49. ISBN 978-0470655634.
- 1 2 3 John Boli & George M Thomas (Apr 1997). "World Culture in the World Polity: A Century of International Non-Governmental Organization" (PDF). American Sociological Review. 62 (2): 172–3, 174, 179–82, 187–8. doi:10.2307/2657298. JSTOR 2657298.
- 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 John Boli (2006). "World Polity Theory". In Roland Robertson; Jan Aart Scholte (eds.). Encyclopedia of Globalization. Routledge. ISBN 978-0415973144.
- ↑ Wimmer, Andreas (2021-05-01). "Domains of Diffusion: How Culture and Institutions Travel around the World and with What Consequences" (PDF). American Journal of Sociology. 126 (6): 1389–1438. doi:10.1086/714273. ISSN 0002-9602. S2CID 235372380.
- ↑ Nitza Berkovitch (1999). John Boli; George M Thomas (eds.). The Emergence and Transformation of the International Women's Movement. pp. 109–110, 119–121, 124–126. ISBN 978-0804734226.
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