Debating Alternative Conventions and Defying False Friends: The Concept of Crisis in the Rational Choice Theory of Institutions and Historical Social Change

Although the term „crisis“ seems to be ubiquitous, there are historical phases when it more abound than in others. For the years since 1989, or the 1930s, the term has (in most parts of the worlds) a higher importance than for the 1950s and 1960s. This can be understood from the fact that these times are phases in which institutional change is both going on and being prepared.

In rational choice perspective, institutions are added game elements in the game structure of human interaction, and they have both conventional and normative aspects. This perspective allow to study institutional change as characteristically depending on the complexity of organizational interaction: Independent organizations allow for early and smooth institutional change, as in the case of changing family concepts. However, there are cases as economic regulation, where organizations act in strong interdependencies and finding a new institutional setting becomes a question of social debate while the performance of old institutions degrades: These are crises. In crises, many solutions are discussed, including those with biased consequences and ‚false friends‘ for which lower adaptation costs go together with a lower long-run adequacy. Hence sociological imagination and the deconstruction of old norms and perspectives can be rather helpful in avoiding false friends and desastrous consequences for solving crises.

For the case study of the economic regulation of industrial society it can be said that unexpected consequences of the desaster (i.e. experiences of modern warfare) did probably the larger part of preparing the Post-War solutions. For the case study of introducing non-smoking policies, that was not the case. The currently greater degree of population access to information may explain the difference, giving rise to the hope that sociological imagination in the general public may add to solving the current transition problems.