ABSTRACT
We have seen in Chapter 3 how, in the light of the social philosophy that Vincent Ostrom tried to elaborate as a basis for the Bloomington research program, ideas, language and learning processes are critical elements in understanding the institutional order. His argument that the ideas, beliefs, values and institutional designs of social actors should be at the forefront of social science investigations was in the 1960s, when he started to articulate it, both outdated and premature. Outdated, because in a context dominated by the behavioral and positivist revolutions it sounded as an echo of a previous stage in the evolution of social sciences. Premature, because it preceded by decades the new interest in cognition and belief systems that became a mark of many social science research programs in the 1990s. Yet, old-fashioned or premature, the attention given to the role of ideas gives the Bloomington programs a special, distinctive flavor. This chapter will further explore the distinctiveness of the social philosophy and social theory behind the Bloomington School of Institutional Theory by focusing on this specific notion that ideas represent both the ontological and epistemological keys of social order, a notion that even within the School itself has yet to be fully developed to its real theoretical, methodological and operational potential.
