Concept

Institution

Overview

An institution is a humanly devised structure of rules and norms that shape and constrain social behavior. All definitions of institutions generally entail that there is a level of persistence and continuity. Laws, rules, social conventions and norms are all examples of institutions. Institutions vary in their level of formality and informality. Institutions embody a great deal of knowledge of how to do things in society and have been described as the social science equivalent of theories in the natural sciences.

Institutions are a principal object of study in social sciences such as political science, anthropology, economics, and sociology (the latter described by Émile Durkheim as the "science of institutions, their genesis and their functioning"). Primary or meta-institutions are institutions such as the family or money that are broad enough to encompass sets of related institutions. Institutions are also a central concern for law, the formal mechanism for political rule-making and enforcement. Historians study and document the founding, growth, decay and development of institutions as part of political, economic and cultural history.

Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).

In the original texts

Passages from public-domain books where Institution is discussed.

The performance of this duty requires, too, very different degrees of expense in the different periods of society. After the public institutions and public works necessary for the defence of the society, and for the administration of justice, both of which have already been mentioned, the other works and institutions of this kind are chiefly for facilitating the commerce of the society, and those for promoting the…
Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations
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The Aspects of a Moral Institution. An institution is, as we have seen the expression of unity of desires and ideas; it is general intelligence in action, or common will. As such common will, it is, as respects the merely private or exclusive wants and aims of its members, absolutely _sovereign_. It must aim to control them.
John Dewey, Outlines of a Critical Theory of Ethics
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The ancient institutions of Greece and Rome seem to have been much more effectual for maintaining the martial spirit of the great body of the people, than the establishment of what are called the militias of modern times. They were much more simple. When they were once established, they executed themselves, and it required little or no attention from government to maintain them in the most perfect vigour.
Adam Smith, An Inquiry Into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations
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The institutions of Western Christendom embodied a theory which was really believed, as no theory by which our present institutions can be defended is now believed.
Bertrand Russell, Why Men Fight
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Such a large number of higher educational establishments are now to be found everywhere that far more teachers will continue to be required for them than the nature of even a highly-gifted people can produce; and thus an inordinate stream of undesirables flows into these institutions, who, however, by their preponderating numbers and their instinct of 'similis simile gaudet' gradually come to determine the nature of…
Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, On the Future of our Educational Institutions
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Institution

Overview

In the original texts

Philosophers who discussed Institution

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