Institutions and society

Abstract

Many works have been written about institutions, social systems and the problem of their transformation. Most of them are directly or indirectly based on the ideas of economic or technological determinism. Reductionism as a method of analysis remains the most attractive for the majority of researchers. Authors adhering to this logic consider institutions and social systems as well as their evolution through the prism of one of the decisive factors. These factors, depending on the paradigm affiliation of the scientist, include the mode of production, technological innovation, and geographical conditions. These arguments relieve the authors of doubts more than they consistently explain the reasons why in some cases these factors had a positive impact on a limited number of societies, while most countries were not able to turn them to their advantage. Unwillingness to agree with the obvious limitations of the one-factor approach often leads to eclecticism or apology for the historical case. An alternative to reductionism is the structural approach. Thanks to it, as complex a phenomenon as society is not reduced to one basis and is considered as a historically formed structure of institutions. Structural approach allows to explain the differences in the structure of social systems not through their reduction to a certain material principle, but through the correlation of institutions. The institutional structure determines the type of social system, the modernization of a traditional society is possible only if its institutional structure is transformed. The necessary level of theoretical concretization, and as a result, a more accurate empirical confirmation of their ideas, of the institutional-structural approach was achieved by cognitivism.