Institutions are criticized from time to time. This criticism can be directed at all kinds of institutions, from the family and the workplace to local political institutions in our country and international ones such as the European Union. We tend to welcome this kind of critical spirit. Even if we don't agree with all the critiques, we believe that they should not be silenced.

However, we are often sensitive to criticism of institutions that we consider worthy of protection, even when we don’t fully understand how they work. The reason for this is simple: we are aware that they somehow make a way of life that we value possible. In what follows, I will try to show why this desire to protect these institutions is well-grounded, starting with the fundamental question of what an institution is.

John Searle, one of the most prominent philosophers on this topic, defines an institution as “any collectively accepted system of rules (procedures, practices) that enable us to create institutional facts.”1 Let’s analyze each part of this definition separately. He argues that rules typically take the form of X counts as Y in C, where the X term identifies certain features of an object or person or state of affairs, the Y term assigns a special status to that person, object, or state of affairs, and C specifies the context. For example, we can say that the euro (X) counts as the official currency (Y) of 20 out of the 27 European Union member states (C). Here we have an institutional fact.

But what about the part about collective acceptance? This is where things become more complicated, because institutional facts involve a type of recognition that distinguishes them from mere social facts. When we say that the euro is the official currency in 20 EU member states, we mean that the euro has been collectively assigned a status whereby it is recognized as the currency for making purchases, paying bills, receiving a salary, and so on. This is different from saying that people from these 20 EU member states like to take their holidays in Spain or Italy, for example, because if some people don't like to take their holidays there, they can freely go to another country.

It is reasonable to wonder now how such a simple, even feeble, apparatus as an institution can construct institutional structures. How do we go from 'X counts as Y in C' to a concrete country? This is partly due to the formal aspects of institutions, such as the infinite iteration of rules expressed as 'X counts as Y in C' (X1 counts as Y1 in C, but Y1 = X2, and X2 counts as Y2 in C, and so on), as well as the interlocking of institutions. For instance, the euro counts as the official currency of 20 out of the 27 members of the European Union; salaries paid in euros count as the salaries that one receives from formal jobs in these countries; part of these salaries paid in the official currency goes to the pension system, and so on.

Thus, we ended up with a very complex structure that makes life as we know it possible, starting from a very simple assignment of status, like the euro counting as the official currency of 20 out of the 27 EU member states. It is no coincidence that Searle considers the rules derived from counting X as Y in C to be constitutive of institutional structures. This means that they do more than simply regulate by indicating what to do or not to do; rather, they enable institutions and institutional structures. Put simply, the European Union would probably be very different today if the euro were not the official currency.

However, this is not the whole story when it comes to institutions. In my opinion, one benefit of Searle’s definition is that, by focusing on the ‘collective acceptance’ of rules, one can explore the non-formal dimensions of institutions, such as the causes of their acceptance or rejection and the social implications of this acceptance or rejection.

For example, the Swedish political scientist Bo Rothstein illustrates the importance of trust in institutions in an accessible way by telling a personal story. In 1997, he was invited by the Swedish Ministry for Foreign Affairs to deliver a lecture at the Swedish Embassy in Moscow. They needed him to deliver a lecture to Russian officials on how the Swedish welfare state works. Afterwards, a third-ranking official in the Russian tax administration approached him to clarify some points.

The Russian officer was previously told that the Swedish National Tax Board collected 98.7 percent of what it billed Swedish taxpayers. He was skeptical about this figure because the Russian tax administration could not collect more than about 24 percent of the total taxes due from Russian citizens according to their tax returns. However, Rothstein confirmed the figure and explained that Swedish people were willing to pay taxes because they trusted the tax administration.2

The point in recalling this particular example is to show that some institutions create praiseworthy realities, while others create regrettable ones. In the previous example, the conclusion was that Russians were not paying their taxes because they did not trust the tax administration. And this is regrettable because from simple distrust we were led into a social trap, that is, “a situation where individuals, groups, or organizations are unable to cooperate owing to mutual distrust and lack of social capital, even where cooperation would benefit all.” 3

This brings me back to the beginning of the article, where I mentioned that some people are sensitive to criticism of institutions they consider worthy of protection. We react like this because we are aware that institutional change of the kind suggested by these critiques will not go unnoticed. As we saw, institutions have tangible consequences for people, and we may think that we will be worse off in the new circumstances. The concept of 'conservative impulse' is useful for understanding this. Here, 'conservative' is not linked to any political position but to the tendency to think and behave within existing structures, while 'impulse' relates to the spontaneity of the reaction.4

Conversely, it could be argued that institutional change is necessary because we live in undesirable conditions. However, the reason to believe that this conservative impulse is well-founded is not entirely normative. Clearly, any impulse needs to be articulated properly; it needs to be transformed from an impulse into an argument to be considered in a deliberative process. Nevertheless, this impulse contains implicit information that should be considered in a context where the idea of change will always be more salient, since criticism used to be formulated in ideal conditions. It demands an answer to the question of why, if something is labelled as so regrettable, some people cling to it. The answer could be very revealing. In other words, we can view this conservative impulse as a reminder that prudence is necessary when making institutional changes.

References

1 Searle, J. R. (2005). What is an institution? Journal of Institutional Economics, 1(1), 1–22.
2 Rothstein, B. (2005). Social Traps and the Problem of Trust. Cambridge University Press.
3 Ibid.
4 Waldmann, P. (2022). El impulso conservador. El cambio como experiencia de pérdida. LOM.