What Are Institutional Groups?

Abstract

We are all members of some institutional group or another, and we may all be members of different institutional groups at the same time (e.g., someone can be a faculty member, the goalie of a football team and a UK citizen simultaneously). Since being a member of an institutional group involves occupying a certain role assigned with certain normative attributes (viz., rights, duties, powers and responsibilities), our institutional membership shapes to an important extent the way we interact with each other in our everyday life. Crucially, though, institutional groups cannot exist independently of our social interaction. On the contrary, they exist as particular forms of social organisation. In this paper I present an ontological analysis of institutional groups that elaborates on this idea and shows how, when so organised, we can create more complex and sophisticated social entities, e.g., institutions. In the following sections, I introduce and argue for three main theses. In §2 I claim that an institutional group is a realisation of a formal group structure. In arguing for this thesis, I improve on Ritchie’s ontological structuralism. In §3 I hold that institutional groups can perform intentional actions. This thesis results from an ontological analysis of institutional and proxy agency akin to Ludwig’s theory of collective action. In §4 I distinguish between institutions and institutional groups and state that the former are institutional practices. I take up this issue here, firstly, because I consider misleading some of the characterisations of institutions that prominent social ontologists have recently offered (e.g., Searle, Guala and Ludwig), and, secondly, because I think it is important to clarify the way institutional groups create institutions. By following Tuomela, I argue that institutions consist in institutional activities conducive to the realisation (or “satisfaction”) of institutional activity types. Since this realisation is carried out by institutional groups, our having an answer to what are institutional groups? is a necessary step towards a better understanding of what institutions are and how we create them.