Allan Schmid: Social Learning, Evolution, and Emergence
"The next important step for social science," writes Elinor Ostrom, "is developing a cluster of tools for analyzing dynamic situations — particularly institutional change."
Fortunately, in chapter 13 of Conflict and Cooperation: Institutional and Behavioral Economics, [Allan] Schmid has initiated a major effort to introduce approaches that can be used in the analysis of institutional change.
Among the approaches he identifies is one that examines the three processes of 'Social Learning, Evolution, and Emergence.'
From the aforementioned chapter of Conflict and Cooperation, by Michigan State University professor of agricultural, institutional, and behavioral economics Allan Schmid:
A social force is defined by Field as a force that cannot be attributed to any individual or group and cannot be explained by an aggregation of the decisions of many maximizing individuals (Field 1979).
Some argue that this is an empty set and all behavior including that which exhibits caring, trust, and willingness to play by the rules is really calculated to serve narrow utility maximization. To the contrary, these behaviors are generally learned and internalized without any specific promise of quid pro quo. ... Institutions supply a cue of social appropriateness rather than a logic of instrumentality (March & Olsen 1989). ...
[P]eople learn to see things as variables that they once took as part of nature. People learn to change their discount rates and planning horizons and the period over which their limited maximization is calculated. People learn malevolence and benevolence that affect who they will trade with and treat as object or subject. They change their expectations and imaginations of the future and the possible.
