POLI 100 Lecture Notes - Sub-Saharan Africa, Government Simulation Game, Structuration Theory
11 Mar 2014
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Document Summary
Institution: regular patterns of behaviours that give stability and predictability to social life. Informal with no clear written rules; examples: family, social classes, or ethnic groups. Formal institution: codified rules and organization, including governments, political parties. Bureaucracies, legislatures and constitutions: can be seen as constraints, or tools or resources to achieve specific political or other goals, many theorists try to identify regularities, e. g. Duverger"s law: stating that first-past- the-post electoral systems produce two-party systems: other theorists examine the environment by examining environmental pressure. Structure and agency : structure refers to the impact of a particular group of institution. Path-determined outcomes; once a particular decision was taken, other decisions along the same path become easier to follow. Agency refers to the impact of actions taken by one or more agents, either individuals or groups of them. It is rare that particular political outcome is determined by structure alone.
