ABSTRACT
This chapter aims to explain collective choices pertaining to institutionalization. Institutional political choices determine an actor's future position among other actors within an organizational domain and in interorganizational networks. Game-theoretical exchange-models of interaction imply exogenously given, single, complementary interests of two actors involved at a time. Mutual complementary interests and joint interests can be viewed as quite different sources of cooperation. Cooperative behavior is either based on the "rationally motivated mutual compensation of interests or on a similarly motivated unionization of interests". The competition among special-interest groups for political influence, as well as the encompassing organization of more general interests or corporatist networks, can all help to prevent excessive "dead-weight" losses from interest intermediation. In the United States nuclear power sector one finds less than a handful of business associatons with very strong and very specific economic interests in nuclear power operations.
