ABSTRACT
This chapter presents the idea of institutions that will encompass the ways in which the term has been used, while giving it greater clarity and some operational precision, and to discuss some of the issues that arise in the use of the term. The words institution and institutional are central to institutionalist theory. In addition, institution is widely used in all the social sciences, but again without a well-defined meaning, whether across the social sciences or within any one of them. The folkviews indicate which activities belong within which institutions and substantiate or correct first approximations made on the basis of similarity of patterned actions. One consequence has been that institutionalists have occasionally treated such general disparagements of many institutions or many aspects of institutions as if ceremonial imbecility were the defining or essential trait of all institutions. Institutions change within the context of existing rules and folkviews, adapting some rules and folkviews and creating some new ones.
