IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/hal/wpaper/hal-04600184.html

Do institutions evolve like material technologies?

Author

Listed:
  • Catherine Molho

    (VU - Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam [Amsterdam])

  • Jorge Peña

    (TSE-R - Toulouse School of Economics - UT Capitole - Université Toulouse Capitole - Comue de Toulouse - Communauté d'universités et établissements de Toulouse - EHESS - École des hautes études en sciences sociales - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique - INRAE - Institut National de Recherche pour l’Agriculture, l’Alimentation et l’Environnement)

  • Manvir Singh

    (UC - University of California)

  • Maxime Derex

    (TSE-R - Toulouse School of Economics - UT Capitole - Université Toulouse Capitole - Comue de Toulouse - Communauté d'universités et établissements de Toulouse - EHESS - École des hautes études en sciences sociales - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique - INRAE - Institut National de Recherche pour l’Agriculture, l’Alimentation et l’Environnement)

Abstract

Norms and institutions enable large-scale human cooperation by creating shared expectations and changing individuals' incentives via monitoring or sanctioning. Like material technologies, these social technologies satisfy instrumental ends and solve difficult problems. However, the similarities and differences between the evolution of material technologies and the evolution of social technologies remain unresolved. Here, we review evidence suggesting that, compared to the evolution of material technologies, institutional and normative evolution exhibits constraints in the production of variation and the selection of useful variants. These constraints stem from the frequency-dependent nature of social technologies and limit the pace and scope of normative and institutional evolution. We conclude by reviewing research on the social transmission of institutions and norms and highlighting an experimental paradigm to study their cultural evolution.

Suggested Citation

  • Catherine Molho & Jorge Peña & Manvir Singh & Maxime Derex, 2024. "Do institutions evolve like material technologies?," Working Papers hal-04600184, HAL.
    • Handle: RePEc:hal:wpaper:hal-04600184
    Note: View the original document on HAL open archive server: https://hal.science/hal-04600184v1
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://hal.science/hal-04600184v1/document
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:hal:wpaper:hal-04600184. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: CCSD (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.