“Discussions about institutions are usually plagued with some basic misconceptions. …

[1] The first misconception is, that institutions are collectivities. They are not. Institutions are collectively shared and enacted modes of acting, thinking and feeling … One can join collectivities, whereas institutions are internalized and enacted. …

[2] Secondly, the concept of institution is not equivalent to that of organization … the concept of organization refers to functional rationality, to differentiations of power, to formal structures. … The concept of institution refers rather to substantial rationality, to authority, and to ideological values and norms. …

[3] Thirdly, institutions as traditional patterns of behavior are often held to be structures that curb creativity and stifle individual freedom. … institutions can and usually do create a space … of liberty. … institutions set creative energies free precisely because they liberate us from the time and energy consumed in tasks to plan and design our actions, thoughts and feelings each time we set out to act in and upon the world …

Institutions … are traditional and collective patterns of behavior (of acting, thinking and feeling) which ‘existed’ before we were born, and in all probability will continue to ‘exist’ after we have died. Institutions change, … sometimes slow and gradual, sometimes rapid and revolutionary. … At some point in our cultural evolution individuals must have started them but it is impossible to trace back these historical origins. …

It is quite hazardous to employ concepts such as ‘the law’, ‘the family’, ‘marriage’, ‘state’ etc. as metaphors when describing and analyzing pre-industrial, non-Western societies and cultures. … What is universal is not the monogamous, heterosexual marriage and the nuclear family based upon it … but the fact that people somehow mold their intersexual and procreative activities and relations in an institutional pattern. …

Institutions as universal behavior patterns cannot disappear since they are the very foundations of the human species. … They will change their structure, their meaning and maybe even their composition but continue to be fed by their … roots. …

In a traditional, rural society questions about the meaning and utility of institutions like the church or marriage are never raised. They are taken for granted, they are relevant, useful, valuable and meaningful simply because  they are enacted and therefore exist. In fact, they are held to be ‘natural’ …

The impressions and stimuli which in an industrial society continue to grow in number and in intensity, pour in incessantly and massively, and impinge on the impulses and desires which, left to their own devices, are chaotic and unstructured. This, of course, contributes to insecurity, mental confusion and psychological stress and instability. The institutions are no longer able to drain these tensions and confusions away. …

[Nevertheless,] social life and economic transactions are impossible without institutions. … In a radically anarchistic, de-instutionalized community people would have to debate and to negotiate each step, each decision, each conclusion, and they would have to do so each day, each moment of the day …”

aus: Anton G. Zijderveld: The Institutional Imperative. The Interface of Institutions and Networks. Amsterdam: Amsterdam Univerisity Press 2000, S.22, 30, 38, 39, 55, 58, 73.

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