In this Chapter, we address the challenge of explaining institutional change, asking whether the much-criticized rational choice perspective can contribute to the understanding of institutional change in political science. We discuss the methodological reasons why rational choice institutionalism (RCI) often assumes that institutional change is exogenous and discontinuous. We then identify and explore the possible pathways along which RCI can be extended to be more useful in understanding institutional change in political science. Finally, we reflect on what RCI theorizing would (...) look like if it started to take endogenous change seriously: by giving up some of its simplifying assumptions, RCI can be a useful tool for analyzing institutional change, but choosing this path has consequences for the generality of the models in RCI as well as for the style of its theorizing. (shrink)

Institutions can be strong or weak. But what does this mean? Equilibrium theories equate institutions with behavioural regularities. In contrast, rule theories explicate them in terms of a standard that people are supposed to meet. I propose that, when an institution is weak, a discrepancy exists between the regularity and the standard or rule. To capture this discrepancy, I present a hybrid theory, the Rules-and-Equilibria Theory. According to this theory, institutions are rule-governed behavioural regularities. The Rules-and-Equilibria Theory provides the (...) basis for two measures of institutional strength. First, institutions that pertain to coordination games solve problems of information. Their strength is primarily a matter of the expected degree of compliance. Second, institutions that concern mixed-motive games solve problems of motivation. Their strength can be measured in terms of the weight people attribute to its rule. (shrink)

In this chapter, my main aim is to explore some of the central moral critiques of international financial institutions as well as proposals to overcome the moral problems that they face.

Political legitimacy is best understood as one type of a broader notion, which I call institutional legitimacy. An institution is legitimate in my sense when it has the right to function. The right to function correlates to a duty of non-interference. Understanding legitimacy in this way favorably contrasts with legitimacy understood in the traditional way, as the right to rule correlating to a duty of obedience. It helps unify our discourses of legitimacy across a wider range of practices, especially (...) including the many evaluations we increasingly make of international institutions of various sorts, but also including domestic institutions. (shrink)

It is conventional wisdom among political philosophers that ideal principles of justice must guide our attempts to design institutions to avert actual injustice. Call this the ideal guidance approach. I argue that this view is misguided— ideal principles of justice are not appropriate "guiding principles" that actual institutions must aim to realize, even if only approximately. Fortunately, the conventional wisdom is also avoidable. In this paper, I develop an alternative approach to institutional design, which I call institutional failure analysis. The (...) basic intuition of this approach is that our moral assessment of institutional proposals is most effective when we proceed from a detailed understanding of the causal processes generating problematic social outcomes. Failure analysis takes the institutional primary design task to be obviating or averting institutional failures. Consequently, failure analysis enables theorists to prescribe more effective solutions to actual injustice because its focuses on understanding the injustice, rather than specifying an ideal of justice. (shrink)

The author criticizes the characterization of institutional objects (proposed independently by John Searle and Ota Weinberger) according to which institutional objects are necessarily objects cum fundamento in re, that is, objects that presuppose a material substrate on which they are based.

Katzav and Vaesen have argued that control by analytic philosophers of key journals, philosophy departments and at least one funding body plays a substantial role in explaining the emergence of analytic philosophy into dominance in the Anglophone world and the corresponding decline of speculative philosophy. They also argued that this use of control suggests a characterisation of analytic philosophy as, at the institutional level, a sectarian form of critical philosophy. I test these hypotheses against data about philosophy job hires at (...) key philosophy departments in the USA during the period 1930-1979, and against data about PhD completions during the period 1956-1965. I argue, further, that Katzav and Vaesen’s hypotheses can fully explain the data and are more fully able to do so than are some other key accounts of the emergence of analytic philosophy in the USA. (shrink)

This paper argues that the concept and role of ‘institutional racism’ in contemporary discussions of race should be reconsidered. It starts by distinguishing between ‘intrinsic institutional racism’, which holds that institutions are racist in virtue of their constitutive features, and ‘extrinsic institutional racism’, which holds that institutions are racist in virtue of their negative effects. It accepts intrinsic institutional racism, but argues that a ‘disparate impact’ conception of extrinsic conception faces a number of objections, the most serious being that it (...) has no plausible account of what it is that makes extrinsically racist institutions racist. It also argues that claims about the explanatory indispensability of institutional racism are overstated (individual racism is at least as important), critiques structural approaches to racial inequality, and suggests that there is reason to doubt whether institutional reform can provide us with all that morality may require in the racial domain. (shrink)

The paper aims to explain different cases of disobedient institutional behavior using the attitude-based model. The issue of how to analyze and capture the faces of disobedience in a simple model is approached in three steps: first, misbehavior is defined as a certain lack in normative attitudes; second, these attitudes are distinguished in terms of normative acceptance and normative guidance; and third, combinations of these attitudes represent basic types of disobedience: opposing, transgressing and conforming. These three categories constitute an analytical (...) typology of disobedient agents compatible with the theory of social institutions. (shrink)

In all probability, future generations will outnumber us by thousands or millions to one. In the aggregate, their interests therefore matter enormously, and anything we can do to steer the future of civilization onto a better trajectory is of tremendous moral importance. This is the guiding thought that defines the philosophy of longtermism. Political science tells us that the practices of most governments are at stark odds with longtermism. But the problems of political short-termism are neither necessary nor inevitable. In (...) principle, the state could serve as a powerful tool for positively shaping the long-term future. In this chapter, we make some suggestions about how to align government incentives with the interests of future generations. First, in Section II, we explain the root causes of political short-termism. Then, in Section III, we propose and defend four institutional reforms that we think would be promising ways to increase the time horizons of governments: 1) government research institutions and archivists; 2) posterity impact assessments; 3) futures assemblies; and 4) legislative houses for future generations. Section IV concludes with five additional reforms that are promising but require further research: to fully resolve the problem of political short-termism we must develop a comprehensive research program on effective longtermist political institutions. (shrink)

We attribute knowledge to institutions on a daily basis, saying things like "the government knew about the threat" or "the university did not act upon the knowledge it had about the harassment". Institutions can also attribute knowledge to themselves, like when Maybank Global Banking claims that it offers its customers "deep expertise and vast knowledge" of the Southeast Asia region, or when the United States Geological Survey states that it understands complex natural science phenomena like the probability of earthquakes occurring (...) along a given fault line. This article aims to discover when we can correctly attribute knowledge to an institution. I find this an interesting question, especially because when something does go wrong, all too often the official line of response from institutions is that they were unaware of the situation: in other words, they did not have enough information at their disposal. I will argue that institutions have fewer excuses for being ignorant than individuals do, and that many admissions of institutional knowledge are too modest. I begin by discussing a real-life example of the latter, before turning my attention to the usually fragmented nature of institutional knowledge. I also discuss the robustness of this knowledge, offering a distinction between two types of institutional knowledge. I then discuss knowledge parameters and why institutions have fewer excuses for not knowing about something than individuals do. I round off the chapter by examining institutional knowledge on climate change. (shrink)

Elsewhere we have responded to the so-called demandingness objection to consequentialism – that consequentialism is excessively demanding and is therefore unacceptable as a moral theory – by introducing the theoretical position we call institutional consequentialism. This is a consequentialist view that, however, requires institutional systems, and not individuals, to follow the consequentialist principle. In this paper, we first introduce and explain the theory of institutional consequentialism and the main reasons that support it. In the remainder of the paper, we turn (...) to the global dimension where the first and foremost challenge is to explain how institutional consequentialism can deal with unsolved global problems such as poverty, war and climate change. In response, following the general idea of institutional consequentialism, we draw up three alternative routes: relying on existing national, transnational and supranational institutions; promoting gradual institutional reform; and advocating radical changes to the status quo. We evaluate these routes by describing normatively relevant properties of the existing global institutional system, as well as by showing what institutional consequentialism can say about alternatives to it: a world government; and multi-layered sovereignty/neo-medieval system. (shrink)

In this paper, I criticize the thesis that value-laden approaches in American philosophy of science were marginalized in the 1960s through the editorial policy at Philosophy of Science and funding practices at the National Science Foundation. I argue that there is no available evidence of any normative restriction on philosophy of science as a domain of inquiry which excluded research on the relation between science and society. Instead, I claim that the absence of any exemplary, professional philosopher who discussed the (...) relation between science and society sufficed to narrow the focus of philosophers of science, given the institutional stabilization of the domain within professional philosophy from 1959 onwards. (shrink)

We argue that the notion of "mental institutions"-discussed in recent debates about extended cognition-can help better understand the origin and character of social impairments in autism, and also help illuminate the extent to which some mechanisms of autistic dysfunction extend across both internal and external factors (i.e., they do not just reside within an individual's head). After providing some conceptual background, we discuss the connection between mental institutions and embodied habits of mind. We then discuss the significance of our view (...) for understanding autistic habits of mind and consider why these embodied habits are sometimes a poor fit with neurotypical mental institutions. We conclude by considering how these insights highlight the two-way, extended nature of social impairments in autism, and how this extended picture might assist in constructing more inclusive mental institutions and intervention strategies. (shrink)

The goal of our article is to review the widespread anthropological figure, according to which we can achieve a better understanding of humans by contrasting them with animals. This originally Herderian approach was elaborated by Arnold Gehlen, who characterized humans as “deficient beings” who become complete through culture. According to Gehlen, humans, who are insufficiently equipped by instincts, indirectly stabilize their existence by creating institutions, i.e., complexes of habitual actions. On the other hand, Maurice Merleau-Ponty shows that corporeal relationship to (...) the world is already indirect because it is based on preestablished and readjusted “standards” or “norms” of interaction with the environment. Merleau-Ponty then calls these norms “institutions” and views culture as readjustment of institutions which operate already on the level of corporeal existence. The anthropological figure of confronting humans and animals thus cannot produce, as in Gehlen, a contrast between an allegedly “direct” relationship to the world in animals and a supposedly “indirect” relationship to the world in humans. The Herderian approach can be meaningfully retained only if interpreted as an invitation to confront the norms of indirect interaction with the world in animals and in people, that is, if viewed as a comparison of their respective institutions. (shrink)

The purpose of this paper was to examine institutional variables and the supervision of security in secondary schools in Cross River State. The study specifically sought to determine whether there was a significant influence of school population, school type and school location, on the supervision of security in public secondary schools in Cross River State. Three null hypotheses were formulated accordingly to guide the study. 360 students and 120 teachers resulting in a total of 480 respondents, constituted the sample for (...) the study. The instrument used for data collection was a questionnaire while Independent t-test was used to analyze data and test the hypotheses at .05 level of significance using Microsoft Excel version 2013. The results of the findings revealed that school population, school type and school location, all have an influence in the supervision of security in public secondary schools of Cross River State. It was also revealed that lowly populated, mixed-gender, and urban public secondary schools were more efficient in the supervision of security than their counterparts such as highly populated, single-gender and rural secondary schools. Based on the findings of this study, conclusions were drawn and recommendations were made. (shrink)

In his article, I reconsider the normative dimensions of Michel Foucault's genealogical method, especially as they pertain to analyzing the nature of political institutions. He puts forward a normative reading of Foucauldian genealogical critique, and through its lens views political institutions as historically contingent phenomena. This helps us to see how political institutions are transformable.

Scholars are divided on the relationship between cynicism and political life. In this chapter, I describe and endorse what I call 'institutional cynicism' and suggest it can feature within kinds of virtuous civic stances in democratic societies. I accept that some forms of cynicism can be as destructive and as anti-democratic as critics insist. Institutional cynicism, of the sort I describe, can actually make us better citizens. It turns our attention towards sub-optimal aspects of the political institutions of democratic societies, (...) teaching us things about those institutions we need to know, without necessarily leading us into fatalism or despair. (shrink)

Scientific progress has many facets and can be conceptualized in different ways, for example in terms of problem-solving, of truthlikeness or of growth of knowledge. The main claim of the paper is that the most important prerequisite of scientific progress is the institutionalization of competition and criticism. An institutional framework appropriately channeling competition and criticism is the crucial factor determining the direction and rate of scientific progress, independently on how one might wish to conceptualize scientific progress itself. The main intention (...) is to narrow the divide between traditional philosophy of science and the sociological, economic and political outlook at science that emphasizes the private interests motivating scientists and the subsequent contingent nature of the enterprise. The aim is to show that although science is a social enterprise taking place in historical time and thus is of a contingent nature, it can and in fact does lead to genuine scientific progress - contrary to the claims of certain sociologists of science and other relativists who standardly stress its social nature, but deny its progressive character. I will first deal with the factual issue by way of introducing the main concepts and mechanisms of modern institutional theory and by applying them to the analysis of the cultural phenomenon that we call modern science. I will then turn to the normative issue: what is the appropriate content of the institutional framework, for scientific progress to emerge and be sustained at which level should it be set and by whom? Addressing this problematic is equivalent to conducting a constitutional debate leading to a Constitution of Science. (shrink)

With increasing complexity of the networks of social interaction new and more abstract forms of trust are in need. A conceptual analysis of different forms of trust, namely interpersonal trust, trust in groups and institutional trust is given. It is argued that institutional trust cannot totally replace interpersonal trust. Institutional trust rather builds on more personal forms of trust in that it is primarily formed in personal encounters with salient representatives of the institution and presupposes trust in others trusting (...) in the institution. Any form of trust is grounded in some normative foundation. A trusting person can make herself vulnerable to the action of other individuals because she perceives those others as acting from shared aims or values. Thus, some sort of virtue is a prerequisite of any form of genuine trust. While institutional trust may in some respect be more easily acquired than interpersonal trust in general it may bear a fundamental problem: institutional trust may be extraordinary robust with regard to a wide range of behavioral experiences; thus, it may be enduringly maintained although in fact unjustified. In a concluding section the general analysis is illustrated by some reflections on the problem of trust in government. (shrink)

In this article, I consider the role of institutions in Jacques Derrida’s political engagement. In spite of Derrida’s significant involvement with political causes throughout his life, his engagements have received little sustained attention, and this is particularly true of his work with institutions. I turn to two such cases, the Collège international de philosophie and the Parlement international des écrivains and argue that these represent an alternative mode of institutionalisation. These institutions seek to destabilise other institutions as well as themselves.Looking (...) closely at the institutions that Derrida founded, we see three common characteristics emerge. These institutions are anti-hegemonic,self-reflexive and international. I then connect these to Derrida’s thought, offering a reading of the undecidable, which brings forth the importance of conventions in the decision. Finally, I demonstrate that the three shared characteristics of Derrida’s institutions form part of an effort to open up space for the possibility of alterity. Through this, and beyond a distinction between theory/practice, we come to see Derrida’s institutional engagements as an active form of critique, both of other institutions and themselves. (shrink)

In this article, we provide a broad overview of the interplay among cognition, belief systems, and institutions, and how they affect economic performance. We argue that a deeper understanding of institutions’ emergence, their working properties, and their effect on economic and political outcomes should begin from an analysis of cognitive processes. We explore the nature of individual and collective learning, stressing that the issue is not whether agents are perfectly or boundedly rational, but rather how human beings actually reason and (...) choose, individually and in collective settings. We then tie the processes of learning to institutional analysis, providing arguments in favor of what can be characterized as “cognitive institutionalism.” Besides, we show that a full treatment of the phenomenon of path dependence should start at the cognitive level, proceed at the institutional level, and culminate at the economic level. (shrink)

Institutions undertake a huge variety of constitutive purposes. One of the roles of legitimacy is to protect and promote an institution’s pursuit of its purpose; state legitimacy is generally understood as the right to rule, for example. When considering legitimacy beyond the state, we have to take account of how differences in purposes change legitimacy. I focus in particular on how differences in purpose matter for the stringency of the standards that an institution must meet in order to (...) be legitimate. An important characteristic of an institution’s purpose is its deontic status, i.e. whether it is morally impermissible, merely permissible, or mandatory. Although this matters, it does so in some non-obvious ways; the mere fact of a morally impermissible purpose is not necessarily delegitimating, for example. I also consider the problem of conflicting, multiple, and contested institutional purposes, and the different theoretical roles for institutional purpose. Understanding how differences in purpose matter for an institution’s legitimacy is one part of the broader project of theorizing institutional legitimacy in the many contexts beyond the traditional context of the state. (shrink)

This paper articulates and defends three interconnected claims: first, that the debate on the role of values for science misses a crucial dimension, the institutional one; second, that institutions occupy the intermediate level between scientific activities and values and that they are to be systematically integrated into the analysis; third, that the appraisal of the institutions of science with respect to values should be undertaken within the premises of a comparative approach rather than an ideal approach. Hence, I defend the (...) view that the issue be framed in reference to the following question: "What kind of institutional rules should be in place in order for the scientific process to unfold in such a way that the values that we deem more important come to the fore?" Addressing this concern is equivalent to conducting a debate on institutions and their role for science. (shrink)

Dans cet article, nous offrons un large aperçu des interactions entre cognition, systèmes de croyances et institutions, et comment elles affectent la performance économique. Nous estimons qu'une meilleure compréhension de l’émergence des institutions, de leurs propriétés de fonctionnement et de leurs effets sur les résultats politiques et économiques doit commencer par une analyse des processus cognitifs. Nous explorons la nature de l'apprentissage individuel et collectif, en soulignant que la question n'est pas de savoir si les agents ont une rationalité parfaite (...) ou limitée, mais plutôt de savoir comment les êtres humains raisonnent ou choisissent réellement, individuellement et collectivement. Nous avons ensuite lié les processus d'apprentissage à l'analyse institutionnelle, fournissant des arguments en faveur de ce qui peut être qualifiée d’« institutionnalisme cognitif ». En outre, nous montrons qu’un traitement complet du phénomène de sentier de dépendance devrait commencer au niveau cognitif, se poursuivre au niveau institutionnel, et aboutir au niveau économique. (shrink)

The article provides an overview of the basic concepts and principles of the theory of institutions as well as of the mechanisms of emergence and evolution of social institutions. It introduces a distinction between formal and informal institutions based on the the criterion of the enforcement agency of institutions. Finally it discusses the problem of path dependence.

Allen Buchanan proposes a methodological framework with which theorists may evaluate different theories of secession, including the National Self-Determination theory. An important claim he makes is, because the right to secede is inherently institutional, any adequate theory of secession must include, as an integral part, an analysis of institutional morality. Because the National Self-Determination theory blatantly lacks such an analysis, Buchanan concludes that this theory is inherently flawed. In this paper, I consider Buchanan’s framework and the responses from supporters of (...) national self-determination theory. I try to clarify the confusion shared by both parties. I conclude that, although Buchanan’s theory of institutional morality is sound, his critiques of the national self-determination theory fails. (shrink)

Apology is arguably the central act of the reparative work required after wrongdoing. Claudia Card’s (1940-2015) analysis of complicity in collectively perpetrated evils moves one to ask whether apology ought to be requested of persons culpably complicit in institutional evils. To better appreciate the benefits of and barriers to apologies offered by culpably complicit wrongdoers, this article examines doctors’ complicity in a practice that meets Card’s definition of an evil, namely, the non-medically necessary, nonconsensual “normalizing” interventions performed on babies born (...) with intersex anatomies. It argues that in this instance, the complicity of doctors is culpable on Card’s terms, and that their culpable complicity grounds rightful demands for them to apologize. (shrink)

Calls to recognize a right of return are a recurring feature of refugee crises. Particularly when such crises become long-term, advocates of displaced people insist that they be allowed to return to their country of origin. I argue that this right is best understood as the right of refugees to return, not to a prior territory, but to a prior political status. This status is one that sees not just any state, but a refugee's state of origin, take responsibility for (...) safeguarding their welfare. This entitlement I characterize as an institutional right: a right that presupposes, and is a necessary feature of, a particular institution. The institution of which the right of return is an indispensable part is the international political system that sees authority exercised by sovereign states. The institutional argument for a right of refugee return presupposes two basic factual claims about states: they play a central role in safeguarding rights and they pursue exclusionary policies of border control. Importantly, the institutional view presupposes only that states do perform both functions, not that they are justified in doing so. On a purely normative level, the institutional account assumes little more than the moral equality of human beings. (shrink)

This paper explores and defends an institutional metaphysics for the Trinity as providing us with an inherently interpersonal reality, and provides general and specific methodological arguments in that direction in the first section. The actual argumentation is then first of all directed against Augustine’s rejection of the family as a suitable analogy for the Trinity. It is instead argued that the family does in fact offer an interesting and suitable analogy. Next, several more general and historic precursors to such an (...) institutional analogy are explored and fleshed out, relying on the legal and economic meaning of the term ‘substance’ as an estate, such as the shared inheritance between a father and a son. The main section further develops the outlines and main features of such an institutional metaphysics, relying on both analogies to result in three persons in one numerically identical substance. The final section returns to the methodological issue but now in an explicitly Marian key, culminating in the Holy Family as a key exemplar for the family analogy. (shrink)

It is widely acknowledged that categories play significant roles in the appreciation of artworks. This paper argues that the correct categories of artworks are institutionally established through social processes. Section 1 examines the candidates for determining correct categories and proposes that this question should shift the focus from category membership to appreciative behaviour associated with categories. Section 2 draws on Francesco Guala’s theory of institutions to show that categories of artworks are established as rules-in-equilibrium. Section 3 reviews the explanatory benefits (...) of this institutional theory of the correct category. [Winner of the 2022 Debates in Aesthetics Essay Prize]. (shrink)

This chapter presents the meeting points and conflicts between Arthur Danto’s philosophy of art and George Dickie’s avowedly succeeding theory. Its focus is on the internalist-externalist debate on the ontology of the artwork as created and perceived within the artworld. It shows that both Danto and Dickie developed anti-formalist theories, that contributed to the demise of aesthetic modernism. Inverting the formalist distinction between internal and external properties of the artwork, they classified the sensuous properties of the artwork as secondary in (...) its essence and identity. Accordingly, Danto and Dickie’s definitions of art emerged from the challenge “to be consistent with art appearing in every possible way.” Both negated the Neo-Wittgensteinians’s proposal to forgo the project of defining art and found the then-new pluralism to be revealing of the essence of art, directing philosophy to art’s nonexhibited infrastructure – beyond the reach of the eye. Across from this, the chapter presents their opposing ideas as revealed through different analyses of the concept of the “artworld”: as an intellectual sphere by Danto versus an institutional one by Dickie. Danto’s internalist/intentionalist ontology begins with the mental and stretches to its embodying material. Opposing it, Dickie’s externalist ontology points to social practices as constituting the artwork, which is attributed with the status of “arthood” by agents in its social sphere. Accordingly, I claim, Danto’s ontology is more versatile than Dickie’s. -/- . (shrink)

The purpose of this article is to provide an alternative antitrust model to the mainstream model that is used in competition policy. I call it the InstitutionalEvolutionary Antitrust Model. In order to construct an antitrust model one needs both empirical knowledge and considerations of how to adequately deal with norms. The analysis of competition as an evolutionary process that unfolds within legal rules provides the empirical foundation for the model. The development of the normative dimension involves the elaboration of a (...) comparative approach. Building on those foundations the main features of the Institutional-Evolutionary Model are sketched out and it is shown that its use leads to systematically different outcomes and conclusions than the dominant antitrust ideals. (shrink)

Accountability of the elected leaders is one of the key factors in a representative democracy. Bangladesh restored a democratic ruling system in 1991 but has struggled to create an effective institutional mechanism to hold the political leaders before the citizens. Information has often been called the oxygen of democracy because of its power to bring accountability through transparency and public disclosure. With the boom of news media organisations and the emergence of the movement for the right to and freedom of (...) information in the early 2000s, many argued that information institutions could build the mechanism for political accountability. On that background, Bangladesh enacted the Right to Information Act in 2009 and established a few key public information institutions including the Information Commission (IC) and Access to Information Programme hoping that the freedom of information would not only challenge the culture of secrecy and veil but also encourage the elected leaders to be answerable to the citizens. But did it really happen? Why? I looked for the answers in this study though the conceptual and analytical lens of freedom of information, proactive disclosure and accountability. For this study, I mainly used the data and cases gathered from secondary sources namely policy papers, reports, newspapers, journals, books and online spaces. I also utilised my own experience of working with a few state organisations. I analysed the current status of accountability mechanisms in Bangladesh focusing mainly on the political accountability (often called the vertical accountability). I also examined a few recent cases in order to understand the role of the information institutions in bringing the political accountability in the current fragile democracy in Bangladesh. Considering the poor democratic practices in the recent years, findings of this study suggest that the accountability of the political leaders has increased to a certain considerable extent. I argue that this is partly because of the increased transparency and proactive disclosure in the formal and informal institutional mechanisms, and mostly because of the leading active role of the mass media organisations. I conclude with the argument that despite having this increased transparency and freedom of information, this improved accountability is not sustainable without an effective democratic institutional mechanism. (shrink)

Research misconduct remains an important problem in health research despite decades of local, national, regional, and international efforts to eliminate it. The ultimate goal of every health research project, irrespective of setting, is to produce trustworthy findings to address local as well as global health issues. To be able to lead or participate meaningfully in international research collaborations, individual and institutional capacities for research integrity are paramount. Accordingly, this paper concerns itself not only with individuals’ research skills but also with (...) institutional and national policies and governance. Such policies and governance provide an ethical scaffold for the production of knowledge and structure incentives. This paper’s operational definition of research therefore draws from Institute of Medicine’s articulation of health research as an inquiry that aims to produce knowledge about the structure, processes, or effects of personal health services; and from an existing health systems framework. The paper reviews the research regulatory environment and the ethics apparatus in Ghana, and describes a project jointly undertaken by Ghanaian researchers in collaboration with New York University to assess the perceived adequacy of current institutional practices, opportunities, and incentives for promoting RI. (shrink)

This study was conducted to investigate the degree to which institutional variables such as: institutional location, ownership and leadership influence the job performance of academic staff across three dimensions: teaching, research productivity and community service. This ex-post facto study by design, tested three hypotheses. A total of 449 academic, randomly drawn from three (one private and two public) universities in Cross River State, Nigeria, participated in the study. Three sets of questionnaires were used for data collection after due validity and (...) reliability tests. They included the “Institutional Variables Questionnaire (IVQ)”, the “Research Productivity and Community Service Questionnaire (RPCSQ)”, and the “Staff Instructional Delivery Questionnaire (SIDQ).” Collected data were analysed using the independent sample t-test, one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) and simple linear analysis. Findings indicated that institutional location significantly impacts university academic staff across multiple dimensions—teaching, research, and community service— with urban institutions consistently demonstrating higher scores than their rural counterparts. There was a significant influence of institutional ownership on research productivity unlike teaching and community service. Federal institutions exhibited higher research productivity than both state and private universities. Institutional leadership significantly influenced research productivity and community service engagement, but not in the dimension of teaching among the academic staff. This study underscores the need for a holistic approach to enhancing academic staff performance. It emphasizes the importance of strategic resource allocation, collaborative endeavours, and strong leadership to create an environment where teaching, research, and community service thrive. (shrink)

Since the transition to a constitutional order, in what respects have cultures in higher education institutions in South Africa become Africanised, and, going forward, how should they be? In this chapter I provide an overview of the major different forms that Africanisation of institutional culture could take, and I then indicate the respects in which South African universities have or have not taken them on board over the past 20 years. In addition, I provide the first comprehensive critical discussion of (...) the major reasons that have been given for Africanising. Specifically, I distinguish between five rationales for Africanising institutional culture, namely, those appealing to relativism, democracy, redress, civilisation and identity, bring out their different implications for the forms that Africanisation should take, and argue that some of these rationales are philosophically much more promising than others. I conclude that the rationales of redress, civilisation and identity together make a compelling case for a moderate form of Africanising the institutional culture of public universities, one that would be much more robust than what has appeared so far on the democratic landscape in South Africa. (shrink)

According to Wringe 2006 we have good reasons for accepting the existence of Global Collective Obligations - in other words, collective obligations which fall on the world’s population as a whole. One such reason is that the existence of such obligations provides a plausible solution a problem which is sometimes thought to arise if we think that individuals have a right to have their basic needs satisfied. However, obligations of this sort would be of little interest – either theoretical or (...) practical – if they did not give rise, either directly or indirectly, to any kinds of reasons for individuals to behave in certain ways. -/- In this paper, I shall argue that in many situations, forward-looking global obligations give rise to an obligation on individuals to work towards bringing into existence and support an institutional system which will enable their obligations to be met. My argument for this conclusion involves two steps. In the first step, I address a general question about how collective obligations can give rise to individual obligations without being reducible to them, and which obligations they give rise to. Here I give a Kant-inspired argument, based on the principles that ‘ought implies can’ and that the content of the moral law is given by reflecting on how agents should legislate in a kingdom of ends, which is designed to show that collective obligations can give rise to individual obligations. In the second step I apply this principle to the case of global forward-looking obligations. (shrink)

This essay develops a thesis regarding the manner through which social institutions such as property come to be, and a second thesis regarding how such institutions ought to be legitimated. The two theses, outlined below, are in need of explication largely because of the entrenched cultural influence of an erroneous reading of social contract theory concerning the historical origins of the state. In part A, I introduce that error. I proceed in parts B and C to present two central theses (...) about institutions: Thesis 1: The construction of social institutions can be understood clearly only if that topic is distinguished from the topic of their normative status, or legitimacy. Thesis 2: The normative status of such institutions can be understood properly only if their legitimacy is distinguished from the legitimacy of government. With the distinction of Thesis 1 in place, an informative socio-technical account of the construction of institutions can be formulated with little ado. This allows for clarity concerning how institutions might be legitimated (Thesis 2), and consequently, legitimation can proceed. Some fundamentals of legitimation from a Kantian perspective are outlined in Part C. (shrink)

Governments are often so focused on short-term gains that they ignore the long term, thus creating extra unnecessary burdens on their citizens, and violating their responsibilities to future generations. What can be done about this? In this paper I propose a package of reforms to the ways in which policies are made by legislatures, and in which those policies are scrutinised, implemented and evaluated. The overarching aim is to enhance the accountability of the decision-making process in ways that take into (...) account the interests of persons in the future. (shrink)

First, we explain the conception of trustworthiness that we employ. We model trustworthiness as a relation among a trustor, a trustee, and a field of trust defined and delimited by its scope. In addition, both potential trustors and potential trustees are modeled as being more or less reliable in signaling either their willingness to trust or their willingness to prove trustworthy in various fields in relation to various other agents. Second, following Alfano (forthcoming) we argue that the social scale of (...) a potential trust relationship partly determines both explanatory and normative aspects of the relation. Most of the philosophical literature focuses on dyadic trust between a pair of agents (Baier 1986, Jones 1996, Jones 2012, McGeer 2008, Pettit 1995), but there are also small communities of trust (Alfano forthcoming) and trust in large institutions (Potter 2002, Govier 1997, Townley & Garfield 2013, Hardin 2002). The mechanisms that induce people to extend their trust vary depending on the size of the community in question, and the ways in which trustworthiness can be established and trusting warranted vary with these mechanisms. Mechanisms that work in dyads and small communities are often unavailable in the context of trusting an institution or branch of government. Establishing trust on this larger social scale therefore requires new or modified mechanisms. In the third section of the paper, we recommend three policies that – we argue – tend to make institutions more trustworthy and to reliably signal that trustworthiness to the public. First, they should ensure that their decision-making processes are as open and transparent as possible. Second, they should make efforts to engage stakeholders in dialogue with decision-makers such as managers, members of the C-Suite, and highly-placed policy-makers. Third, they should foster diversity – gender, ethnicity, age, socioeconomic background, disability, etc. – in their workforce at all levels, but especially in management and positions of power. We conclude by discussing the warrant for distrust in institutions that do not adopt these policies, which we contend is especially pertinent for people who belong to groups that have historically faced (and in many cases still do face) oppression. (shrink)

[This paper is written in Czech language.] The aim of the article is to re-evaluate the still-surviving anthropological trope which, in reaction to an inquiry into the essence of man, compares humans with animals and points to culture as the means by which humans complete their “deficient” nature. This motif contrasting humans with animals has been extended by A. Gehlen who characterises humans as “beings of deficiencies”. In his view, the morphological-instinctive insufficiency of the human being must be stabilised by (...) cultural institutions, i.e. complexes of habitual actions. Merleau-Ponty, however, demonstrates that bodily beings always relate to their environment in an indirect way, on the basis of certain “standards” and “norms” of interaction, which exist by way of institution. The anthropological trope confronting humans and animals thus cannot produce, as in Gehlen, a contrast between an allegedly “direct” relationship to the world in animals, and a supposedly “indirect” relationship to the world in humans. It can be meaningfully retained only if it is interpreted in a Merleau-Pontyan way, that is, as an invitation to understand the transformation of the norms of indirect interaction with the world found in animals into those found in people, that is, if viewed as a comparison of their respective institutions. (shrink)

The study aimed to identify the level of institutional competence in Non-Governmental Organizations in Palestine. The study used the descriptive analytical approach. A structured questionnaire was used to collect data that contribute to achieving the objectives of the study. The study population consists of employees in Non-Governmental Organizations in the southern Palestinian governorates, and a random sample was used. For data collection, (183) applicable questionnaires were retrieved. The results of the study showed that the general assessment of the level of (...) institutional efficiency was high with a relative weight of (91.85%). The results also showed that there were statistically significant differences in achieving institutional efficiency according to the variables (gender, number of years of service), while it was found that there were no statistically significant differences in achieving institutional efficiency. Depending on the variables (educational qualification, age group). The study presented a set of recommendations, the most important of which are: the necessity of providing a budget for training and development, and attracting expertise and specialists in digital transformation to work in organizations. (shrink)

This study used a partial least squares structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM) to estimate curriculum management's direct and indirect effects on university graduate programmes' viability. The study also examined the role of institutional effectiveness in mediating the nexus between the predictor and response variables. This is a correlational study with a factorial research design. The study's participants comprised 149 higher education administrators (23 Faculty Deans and 126 HODs) from two public universities in Nigeria. A structured questionnaire designed by the researchers was (...) used for data collection. The questionnaire was duly validated with an acceptable scale and item content validity indices. The dimensionality of the instrument was determined using exploratory factor analysis (EFA). Convergent validity was based on Average Variance Extracted (AVE), whereas discriminant validity was based on Fornell-Lacker criteria and the Hetero-Trait Mono-Trait (HTMT) ratio. Acceptable composite reliability estimates of internal consistency were reached for the three sub-scales. Following ethical practices, the questionnaire was physically administered to respondents and retrieved afterwards. Smart PLS (version 3.2.9) and SPSS (version 26.0) programs were used for all the statistical analyses. This study uncovered significant direct and indirect effects of curriculum management on the viability of graduate programmes. Institutional effectiveness significantly impacted graduate programmes’ viability while mediating the nexus between curriculum management and graduate programmes’ viability. Curriculum management and institutional effectiveness jointly explained a significant proportion of graduate programmes’ viability variance. The result of this study proved that graduate programmes’ viability depends, to a great extent, on how much curriculum is managed and how effective institutions are with their services. The result of this study can enable institutions seeking to run viable graduate programmes to re-evaluate their curriculum management practices and the effectiveness of their services. (shrink)

The literature contains two concepts of corruption which are often confused with one another: corruption as twisted character (pollution), and corruption as disloyalty. It also contains two sites for corruption: the corruption of individuals, and the corruption of entire institutions such as a state or a legislature.This paper first draws a clear distinction between the pollution and disloyalty concepts of corruption in the individual context, and then defends a conception of disloyalty corruption according to which the distinguishing feature is an (...) agent who uses powers delegated to her from her principal as her own. Then, the paper shifts gears to the institutional context, arguing that the best account of institutional corruption in the extant literature is of the pollution kind. It then fills the remaining logical space by laying out a conception of institutional corruption as disloyalty and explaining its moral significance for the political legitimacy of a democracy. (shrink)

The problem of standard of care in clinical research concerns the level of treatment that investigators must provide to subjects in clinical trials. Commentators often formulate answers to this problem by appealing to two distinct types of obligations: professional obligations and natural duties. In this article, I investigate whether investigators also possess institutional obligations that are directly relevant to the problem of standard of care, that is, those obligations a person has because she occupies a particular institutional role. I examine (...) two types of institutional contexts: (1) public research agencies – agencies or departments of states that fund or conduct clinical research in the public interest; and (2) private-for-profit corporations. I argue that investigators who are employed or have their research sponsored by the former have a distinctive institutional obligation to conduct their research in a way that is consistent with the state's duty of distributive justice to provide its citizens with access to basic health care, and its duty to aid citizens of lower income countries. By contrast, I argue that investigators who are employed or have their research sponsored by private-for-profit corporations do not possess this obligation nor any other institutional obligation that is directly relevant to the ethics of RCTs. My account of the institutional obligations of investigators aims to contribute to the development of a reasonable, distributive justice-based account of standard of care. (shrink)

Francesco Guala has written an important book proposing a new account of social institutions and criticizing existing ones. We focus on Guala’s critique of collective acceptance theories of institutions, widely discussed in the literature of collective intentionality. Guala argues that at least some of the collective acceptance theories commit their proponents to antinaturalist methodology of social science. What is at stake here is what kind of philosophizing is relevant for the social sciences. We argue that a Searlean version of collective (...) acceptance theory can be defended against Guala’s critique and question the sufficiency of Guala’s account of the ontology of the social world. (shrink)

Ethics committees like Institutional Review Boards and Research Ethics Committees are typically empowered to approve or reject proposed studies, typically conditional on certain conditions or revisions being met. While some have argued this power should be primarily a function of applying clear, codified requirements, most institutions and legal regimes allow discretion for IRBs to ethically evaluate studies, such as to ensure a favourable risk-benefit ratio, fair subject selection, adequate informed consent, and so forth. As a result, ethics committees typically make (...) moral demands on researchers: require them to act in a way the committee considers ethically right or appropriate. This paper argues that moral demands are legitimate only if publicly justifiable; and as a result, committee decisions are subject to a public justification requirement. Ethics committees can permissibly request for more information, changes to the research protocol or that the research is delayed or even stopped only if these demands are publicly justifiable. This latter claim is in turn justified on the basis that moral demands to φ are permissible only if we are in a position to know that the addressee ought to φ and that we are in a position to know a proposition only if it is publicly justifiable. This argument suggests that ethics committees must consciously and explicitly appeal to public reasons in their decision-making. In cases where public reasons cannot be offered, committees would not be permitted to reject a given study or make approval conditional on an amendment. (shrink)

Consequentialism is often criticised as being overly demanding, and this overdemandingness is seen as sufficient to reject it as a moral theory. This paper takes the plausibility and coherence of this objection – the Demandingness Objection – as a given. Our question, therefore, is how to respond to the Objection. We put forward a response that we think has not received sufficient attention in the literature: institutional consequentialism. On this view institutions take over the consequentialist burden, whereas individuals, special occasions (...) aside, are required to set up and maintain institutions. We first introduce the Objection, then explain the theory of institutional consequentialism and how it responds to the Objection. In the remainder of the paper, we defend the view against potential challenges. (shrink)

On 26 January 2021, while announcing that the country had reached the mark of 100,000 deaths within 28 days of COVID-19, UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson said that he took “full responsibility for everything that the Government has done” as part of British efforts to tackle the pandemic. The force of this statement was undermined, however, by what followed: -/- What I can tell you is that we truly did everything we could, and continue to do everything that we can, (...) to minimise loss of life and to minimise suffering... -/- Taking these sentiments together, it was hard to avoid the conclusion that the government took responsibility only for doing everything right. Such an admission of responsibility, accommodating no admission of error or wrongdoing, is not really about responsibility at all. Indeed, the UK’s pandemic response has been marked from its earliest days by a shifting of focus from institutional responsibility to personal responsibility for individual UK residents. -/- This paper explores the relationship between these two sites of responsibility—the institutional and the personal—in the context of the sort of pandemic that is ongoing as we write. Section 2 offers some initial definitions and discussions of key terms. Section 3 outlines how these two ideas interact in principle during such emergencies. Section 4 turns to the ‘non-ideal’ implications for personal responsibility of failures of institutional responsibility. While our focus is on the specific context with which we are most familiar, the UK governmental approach, where appropriate we also include examples from other states. (shrink)