POLI 220 Lecture Notes - Lecture 4: Douglass North, Nationstates
18 Mar 2016
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Document Summary
Douglass north: institutions are the rules of the game; organizations are the players. Organizations or activities that are self-perpetuating and valued for their own sake: institutions structure behaviors predictability. Institutions play an important role in defining and shaping what is possible and probable in political life by laying out the rules, norms, and structures in which we live. They can be formal or informal: laws vs. customs: example of law: you can only cast one vote per person, example of custom: in vancouver, you have to line up to take the bus. One of the most popular forms of organizations: a set of institutions that organize power, authority and coercion (a principle of political organizations, a (political) organization characterized by its claim to hold the monopoly of violence. Something that is confusing about the state is that it is at the same time an organization and an actor/a set of rules.
