Concept

We often study the effect of certain social institutions, and sometimes look at transitions, but what effect does passed-on cultural institutions play in the evolution and formation of cohesive social institutions?

Proposition

Suppose that a set of agents have choices over the following

within an institutional period: how to behave towards each other
between institutional periods: which institution to have (and pass on?) to the next generation

Of interest is whether memory (cultural, historical, heritage) affects agents' long-term decisions about social institutions?

Research Questions follow:

is there a stable (long-run) social institution that is selected?
does this institutional structure have a path-dependance (i.e. must institutaion A then B then C preceed the selection and stabilisation of institution X)?
do agents operate heterogeneosly within a period (e.g. old agents who have cultural knnowledge prefer institution X, but young agents, with shorter memories, or trust in passed-on heritage select institution Y?
what scaling? do small vs. large population affect these decisions?
what about a two-population model? do we see group selection occuring to promote a certain institution in both camps? or is there a stable complimentary institutional framework (e.g. E. vs. W. Germany)?

Approach

Keep things simple
construct a simple interaction game for the agents, causing the institutions to be also simple
- (leave out voting methodologies, political interest etc.)

A possible model

a standard hunter-gatherer scenario under scarcity
agents face a decision problem whether to cooperate the hunt or to act individually (stag-hunt style)
for the coalitions: the success of any grouping is proportional to the number in the coalition (due to division of labour within the coalition, trust-based hunting methods)
for the individuals: a minority game design (we are hunting) could lead to preferable outcomes (I didn't hunt where the large, noisy group hunted?)
institutions:
- a 'good' institution for cooperation: a transfer system (public good provision?) to all members of society, supports free-riders in the short-term, but does this survive in the long-run (over successive generations, since some agents remember when everyone had lack)
- a targeted (progressive) taxation system: a transfer system specifically from the well-off top half to the bottom half (ranked in terms of reward from expended gathering effort)
- no transfer system: you get (only) what you work for, no other transfers or public good provision
- a consumption taxation regime: distribution based on discretionary welfare (so we would need a metabolism system for basic needs, and then a discretionary part for 'leisure')
- public good provision through taxation: but only to the 'cultural memory fund' -- i.e. for libraries, books, plays, histories, langauge etc. that capture things about how times were in previous set-ups

Parameters:

memory of each individual (how many previous instutional arrangements they remember)
birth/death rates (how fast we turn over the population ('physical' memory)

A not-so-different possible model

(this is possibly just a different discussion of the same model)

a small set of m state variables - water, guns, food, whatever
a set of n institutions that govern these state variables, of the norm and rule format (making this set is a tricky bit)
- n > m so that there is overlap/conflict among different institutions for governance of the same state variable
a population of agents that are guided by a subset of these institutions (this subset is possibly parameterized by "memory")
stressing events on the state variable that draw out different institutions
some kind of network structure among agents to govern their interactions

The question over time then might be what makes different belief systems (which here are subsets of the institutional set shared by groups of agents) stable or persistent over time.

What is obviously missing from this summary is a description of what the institutions are, what the set needs to include, etc., and i think this is informed partly by some of the other discussion that simon and rafal have posted.

is this structurally too complicated?

Notes and thoughts

From Paul:

Andrew introduced Ostrom's typology of institutional norms--mays, musts, and must nots--where each directive is accompanied by a promise of reward or punishment for compliance or non-compliance. 'Good' institutions presumably alter the fitness landscape of individual players to be more compatable with socially desirable outcomes (contribute to the public good, don't shirk, engage in low-cost or pro-social rather than disruptive forms of status competition, etc.).
I wonder if the institutions that the players choose/develop/vote on between periods could be formulated using this framework, where the institution pairs a punishment/reward to any given individual behavior. The form of the punishment/reward would have to be specified by several variables.
- Let's say the players are considering a punishment for not contributing to a public good. Is the size of the punishment inversely proportional to the amount contributed? What is the shape of that function? Or is there a fixed fine for contributions below a certain level?
Any collective punishment or reward system will require resources for enforcement.
- If players institute a punishment for shriking on a public good, would each be willing to contribute resources to fund the police that enforce it?
The source of new institutions:
- Can we somewhat randomly generate institutions, and see whether they're taken up by the players? Some institutions would be dumb (e.g. the more you contribute to the public good, the more you are punished), and others favorable compared to the original intitutionless setting.
- OR, because there are so many ways an institution could be specified, we could generate a fixed number of institutions that we introduce and allow the players to consider.

Rafal: Is it possible for a "bad" institution to thrive even if the majority of the population prefer to abolish it? Take, for example, the norm of corruption. If an agent breaks a "good" norm and is caught, he receives punishment (P1). However, the agent can propose a bribe to avoid P1. There is some probability that the bribe will be accepted or if not, a harsher punishment (P2) will be administered. It would be nice to show that under certain conditions, there may be some stable population of agents that always proposes a bribe. However, if too many agents propose a bribe, the "good" institution ceases to exist. That could cast some light on why corruption persists in some counties. A related question would be how corruption arises in the first place. Are some "good" institutions more conductive to the emergence of corruption than others? For example, if the government tolerates free riding on a good norm for a while, over time agents may internalize that norm and cooperate because this is the right thing to do. However, if P1 is harsh from the very start, it may encourage corruption because the difference between P1 and P2 will be small so it pays to offer a bribe. Thus, ironically, newly-created good institutions with a strong enforcement mechanism may be self-destructive.

Andrew: Something that is cool to think about with Rafal's bribe ideas is the difference between a system with an exogenous group (like the government) giving the punishment, versus self-governing groups where accountability and punishment arise from the agents sharing a belief in the norm itself. it would be interesting to look at whether in a self-governing system, a "good" norm and a bribe norm can both be stable, like Rafal is discussing.

Readings

A Grammar of Institutions

This is the reading I mentioned that might be a good, consistent framework to codify institutions (Andrew)

Toward better theories of the policy process

A quick review of some influential theories on how different group and individual actors, combine with different events/stresses to bring issues to the policy agenda

International Norm Dynamics and Political Change

This article is about the emergence of norms on an international level so no need to read it closely. However, see pp.895-896 and 901-902 on the life cycle of a norm. Bottom line: It is hard to create/promote a norm but once a norm reaches a tipping point, it cascades through society. We could apply it to the domestic level: Once a certain number of agents adopt a norm, the norm is automatically adopted by the remaining agents.

The evolution of social cohesion

From Santa Fe Institute Events Wiki

Contents