ABSTRACT
Institutions shape many of the things people do. Think of waiting in line in a store, giving way to a car coming from the right (or left, depending on where you are), ordering a meal in a restaurant, buying a house, getting married, chairing a meeting, and running a multi-billion corporation. There are two perspectives on what examples such as these have in common in both philosophy and the social sciences. According to the first, each is an instance of a particular kind of behavioral regularity or recurring activity. According to the second, each is an instance of a certain kind of rule-based behavior. These two perspectives are sometimes combined (Aoki 2011; Greif and Kingston 2011; Hindriks and Guala 2015). In this vein, Raimo Tuomela (2013) argues that institutions are norm-governed social practices. As social practices are recurring activities and as norms are rules, this definition—on which I will rely in this chapter—captures both perspectives.
