POLS 110 Chapter Notes -Consociationalism, Social Capital, Political Anthropology
30 Jan 2014
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Document Summary
Institutions are regular patterns of behaviour that give stability and predictability to social life. Example: the family, social class or ethnic groups. Others are more formalized with codified rules and organizations. Political scientists attempt to identify regular patterns of adaptation as a way of generalizing more widely about the behaviour of political institutions. Structuration theory clarifies the relationships between political institutions and the environmental forces that surround them. Structuration means the factors that hold back and provide resources for change in the operation of institutions and the system as a whole. Big events or changes are never caused by just one factor, there are overlapping causes. Structure refers to the impact of a particular groups of institutions. Agency on the other hand, refers to the impact of actions taken by one or more agents, either individuals or groups. States have many elements like; sovereignty, legitimacy, and a monopoly on the use of force in a particular territorial area.
