Practicing Institutional Design

PracticingInstitutionalDesign

Anne Holthoefer [email protected] The University of Chicago Committee on International Relations, 5828 S. University Ave. Chicago, Il 60615

Paper prepared for the Annual Convention of the International Studies Association, San Francisco April,

2013. This paper is a draft. Please do not cite or circulate without permission of the author.

Abstract

The paper investigates the norm change through the process of formalization and institutional design. How and from what basis do actors task with institutional design make design choices? To what extent is design rationally calculated and strategic? How do normative beliefs about the desirability of certain institutional solutions, as well established relations of power and domination, affect design decisions? In addressing these questions I follow the recent turn in IR to practice theory and shift the focus from design understood as institutional form to the practice of designing. I argue that central to institutional design is a conflict over legitimate interpretation of norms and institutions. Designing institutions is a process of “worldmaking” that seeks to stabilize the meaning of some norms (such as for example the idea of individual responsibility for legal transgressions) over others (sovereignty) and thus produces relations of power (affirming sovereignty by recognizing individual as opposed to collective or sovereign guilt). This is clearly visible in the debates over the International Criminal Court where questions over subject jurisdiction, definition of crimes and jurisdictional scope directly speak to the contraction inherent in sovereignty as the fundamental institutions of international relations.

A n n e H o l t h o e f e r . P r a c t i c i n g I n s t i t u t i o n a l D e s i g n

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1Introduction

Institutions are analytically interesting because they are in many ways the visible expression of social

order. They are comparatively enduring ways to structure behavioral expectations and social interaction

and are thus central to social order. 1 However, social order changes and so do institutions. Thus

institutional theories face the challenge of explaining on one hand the durability of institutions and how

they affect and produce patterns of behavior and, on the other hand, how institutions and their effects

change.

Design is not simply an act of technical construction but is embedded in larger process of social change.

At the same time, design is presented by designers as a deliberate attempt to change and maintain

social order through institutionalization. Thus “design” is also a narrative strategy that actors use to

legitimize their actions. This “design narrative” retrospectively affirms a linear trajectory and historical

legacy of design by emphasizing planning and deliberation rather than contingency, adaptation and

emergence. It entails a naturalization and rationalization of a decentralized and complex process of

institutional change. In other words, institutional form is not simply the result of negotiations between

state actors who seek to maximize efficiency gains or to codify newly emerged norms. Rather,

institutional design – the process we can observe – unfolds over time and is composed of the practice of

a number of different international actors such as politicians, diplomats, and international lawyers but

also human rights advocates, representatives of existing institutions and civil society actors more

generally that respond to and engage in a changing social environment. Understanding institutional

design requires studying it as a process of designing.

This paper asks how we can study institutional design as a deliberate, forward looking activity without

losing sight of the fact that it unfolds over time and that design decisions are made in an evolving social

environment that is already structured by institutions. More specifically, it asks how and from what basis

do designers make design choices? To what extent is design rationally calculated and strategic? How do

normative beliefs about the desirability of certain institutional solutions, as well established relations of

power and domination, affect design decisions?

In addressing these questions I follow the recent turn in IR to practice theory as framework for focusing

on the interaction between agency, choice, and conflict in the process of institutional design without

1 Thelen and Mahoney (2010, 4).


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losing sight of the effects of social structures in which design is embedded. I shift the focus from design

to the practice of designing and argue that design is best studied in context, that is, in a particular social

location. Central to institutional design is a conflict over legitimate interpretation of norms and

institutions. Designing institutions is a process of “worldmaking” that seeks to stabilize (and naturalize)

the meaning of some norms (such as for example the idea of individual responsibility for legal

transgressions) over others (sovereignty) and thus produces (and changes) relations of power (affirming

sovereignty by recognizing individual as opposed to collective or sovereign guilt). An example of this

process of worldmaking are the debates over the International Criminal Court where questions over

subject jurisdiction, definition of crimes and jurisdictional scope directly speak to the contraction

inherent in sovereignty as the fundamental institutions of international relations. Since the ICC is first

and foremost a legal institution, and the actual design was to a large part dominated by international

legal experts.2 The purpose of this paper is to construct a theoretical framework around practices and

practical knowledge that is not specific to the relationship of law and politics but provides a more

general argument for a practice approach to institutional design. A practice approach seeks to avoid

what Bourdieu calls the scholastic fallacy namely the universalization of particular cases, while

simultaneously neglecting the social conditions and unique historical junctures that made it possible.3 It

enables us to different levels of human experience ranging from the tacit knowledge that manifests

itself in everyday interaction to the organization, representation of practical experience (explicit

knowledge) and the struggle of legitimation that is central to institutional design.

The main argument in this paper is that institutional design is best understood through a focus on

practice. I understand practices as materially mediated patters of human activity (physical, mental such

as understanding, knowing how and desiring, emotional activities etc.) that are organized around tacit

and explicit cognitive‐symbolic structures (knowledge).4 Referring to something as a practice indicates

that it is embedded in a particular physical, temporal and social context. Practice approaches arose in

response to arguments that human behavior is largely rule and norm driven.5 In contrast to this practice

theory emphasize the embodied and tacit layer of knowledge that agents employ in their negotiation of

the social environment. That said, I argue below that a practice approach is incomplete if it neglects the

2 On the role of designers in the design process see Wendt (2001, 275). 3 Bourdieu (2000, 49 ff). 4 For definition of practice approaches see Schatzki, Knorr‐Cetina, and Savigny (2001, 2); Turner (1994); and Reckwitz (2002, 246), In IR Williams (2007); Leander (2002); Leander (2008); Pouliot (2008); Adler and Pouliot (2011) have explicitly focused on practice theory. For a post‐structuralist approach to practices see also Doty (1997); Neumann (2002); Hansen (2006). 5 Ortner (1984).


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representational force of explicit knowledge and its interrelationship with tacit knowledge. Indeed, what

makes a practice approach a compelling framework to study institutional design is its sensitivity to both

individuals as strategic actors and their emphasis on the effect that the pre‐existing environment and

personal history has on the kinds of strategies pursuit.

A focus on practices accounts for and individuals lived experience of the social (habitus). At the same

time it also provides means to address broader processes and structural constrains within which

practices are organized (social fields). For example, institutional design is an attempt to assert control

over the social environment and to structure it in such a way to obtain political, social, economic ends.

At the same time, institutional designers inhabit a social location and time. They act through and

interact with other institutions that fundamentally shape what they consider appropriate means to

achieve certain end, as well as what they consider appropriate ends. Existing institutions also influence

what is more generally considered practical and legitimate. Thus, if we want to portray the creation of

formal institution as a way to social change we need to investigate how it fits into the established

institutional framework, how it reproduces and changes existing lines of conflict and struggles over

power and resources.

The paper proceeds as follows: First, I discuss the practice turn in IR theory and in social theory. I show

that the common motivator is a resurrection of the creative potential of agents by a focus on practical

knowledge. Here the concern is that social scientific analysis gives preferential treatment to a specific

kind of knowledge that fails to reflect live experience or what is really going on, on the ground.

However, I argue that by assigning priority to non‐representational practices IR scholars run the danger

of reproducing the exact division that they seek to overcome. Second, I argue that practical knowledge

has to be studied at the location of its application namely in a particular temporal and social context. A

focus on practice has to be complemented by an account of agency that recognizes it as limited (and

local), strategic, and representational. I argue that central to agency is the ability to reflect and make

sense of one’s own experience.

2ThePracticeTurninIR

How to better conceptualize, study, and evaluate the actions of individual agents in relation to society

has been the source of debate not only in international relations but in the social science more

generally. While all theorists agree on the capacity of the individual for purposeful and creative action,

the question of how and how much social structures affect an individual’s beliefs has been answered in

different ways. At the center of the disagreement is the proper approach to conceptualize agency.


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Should one give analytic priority to existing social structures, rules, and norms as prescribing and in fact

narrowing the range of options available to agents? Or, should we treat structures as the result of

aggregate choices that agents make as rational (albeit bounded) independent agents? Most theorists

agree that this is not an either or decision, but that individual beliefs and actions are affected by and in

turn affect the existing social environment. For example, while rational choice theorists treat the “homo

economicus” – a goal oriented utility maximizer – as a useful theoretical construct, they self‐consciously

acknowledge that the corresponding theory of human action, which is based on the assumption that

desires and beliefs lead to a actions, does not provide an explanation for the specific content or origin of

preferences. In contrast, understanding the content and origin of beliefs and identity is central to

proponents of the main competitor of the economic model, which is “homo sociologicus”.

Scholars of international politics have extensively debated the constitutive effect social structures and

institutions have on agents (often via their effects on identity) and by extension on international

relations itself.6 However, important lines of conflict remain with regard to the source of social order

and the relationship of the individual agent to social structure. How do we make sense of agents’ ability

to argue, persuade and make decisions? Are agents guided by social roles, rules and norms and thus

seek to affirm what they consider appropriate? Is social order the result of habits, routines? Or is the

appearance of social order itself the result of an ongoing process of ordering? These questions raise the

important issue of how we can best study and to understand the incredible ability of agents to react,

adapt, and improvise in their navigation of, on the one hand, social constraints, and, on the other, the

continuously changing contingencies of everyday life. In other words, how can we understand the

simultaneous production of the social environment as something stable that imposes objective

constraints on our goals and ambitious?

I want to preface the following discussion by invoking Doty’s argument that the debate over the primacy

of agency or structure (both in IR and social theory) might very well be undecidable.7 However, that a

problem is undecidable does not mean that it should be left alone. Rather, Doty argues, different ways

to pose the question of agency and social change can illuminate different aspects of the problem.

Indeed, the recent turn to study practices – i.e. take seriously how agents act in response to their social

environment is motivated by the observation that no system of rules can adequately capture human

interaction in even its simplest form. This gives rise to a move to critically reflect on the practice of

representation itself, and the effect representations have on the reproduction of social order.

6 Wendt (1999); Wendt and Duvall (1989); Reus‐Smit (1997); Barkin (1998). 7 Doty (1997).


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2.1Agencyvs.StructureinInternationalRelations

Explicit discussions of the constitutive relationship of structure and agency are the hallmark of

constructivist scholarship. Not surprisingly though, there is considerable disagreement on how to

reconcile the constitutive effects of agents and social structures without reducing either one to the

other. The debate in IR on how agents (collective and individual) relate to their social environment takes

the form of two different but complementary approaches that are often treated together in

International Relations under the broad label “constructivism”.

Some constructivist scholars start with shared beliefs as the basis of social order and the source of

shared expectations. 8 While recognizing that individual beliefs and identities are at least partially social,

they maintain an individual actor that is very much defined by his conscious engagement with society

and social structures. For example, institutions are conceived as the source for roles into which actors

are socialized. Actors internalize norms and rules that are then used to determine how they ought to

behave. Norm following behavior is based on an evaluation of the available options. Conflict between

norms is solved via persuasion and argument.9 This is what in international relations is called the logic of

appropriateness.10

Others contrast this account of social action with the argument that much of what agents do is not

based on conscious deliberation. Rather social action is based on taken‐for‐granted‐scripts, rules, and

schemas.11 Here institutions structure reality not by prescribing social roles but as frameworks through

which social reality takes on meaning. They are repositories of symbolic systems, of collective

knowledge that produce schemes for action.12 Social order is the product of mutually reinforcing rule‐

resource sets that generate particular cognitive and behavioral dispositions. Institutions as guarantors of

order enable particular actions but do not determine them. Institutions are both the results of, and

constitutive of, human practice.13

In contrast to theorists who emphasize the normative dimension of institutions, cognitive approaches

focus on the social construction of the agent itself. The difference becomes clear if we look at the effect

8 Wendt (1999, 184 ff). 9 Risse (2000); Deitelhoff and Müller (2005). 10 March and Olson (1998); Johnston (2001), Hurd (1999); Risse (2000); Risse, Ropp, and Sikkink (1999); Checkel (2001). 11 Hasenclever, Meyer, and Rittberger (1997); Checkel (2005). 12 Powell and DiMaggio (1991). In IR see Mitzen (2006); Hopf (2010); Checkel (2005). 13 Berger and Luckman (1967, 52); Sewell (2005); Bourdieu (1977). Sherry Ortner points out that the term practice is consciously chosen to distance it from the term “action” understood as the enactment of rules and norms that had a prominent place in the works of Durkheim, Weber and Parsons. Ortner (1984, 146footnote17).


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of this conception on understandings of social order. The logic of appropriateness assumes that social

order is stabilized by shared values and norms that actors come to perceive as legitimate. Actors

become “convinced” or “socialized” to believe that a particular way of doing business is better than

another. What the logic of appropriateness cannot explain, as Sending has pointed out, is how new

norms gain acceptance independent of the process of persuasion and socialization itself.14

In contrast, cognitive theories, argue that social stability is the result not of beliefs but of practices that

are motivated by a tacit understanding of the rules and norms that structure social interaction.15 Here

social stability is the result of the largely un‐reflected and uncontested acceptance of particular social

structures as given. This is comparable to what Bourdieu calls doxa, namely that which defines the limits

of what is thinkable.16 It follows that stable and successful (in the sense of ensuring compliance)

institutions are partly the result of a shared history or social history. Institutions cannot be created or

changed instantaneously since their acceptance as legitimate depends on being rooted within the larger

social structure.17

In short, cognitive approaches focus on the construction of normality that enables actions. Compliance

with expectations and norms is not a function of considering a norm as appropriate but because a

different kind of behavior is simply inconceivable. Institutions thus depend on routine and regularity,

their stability and longevity is based on the internalization of principles and rules into the self‐

understanding and sense of the social game of its members. Internalization includes but cannot be

reduced to a conscious process that relies on a constant re‐evaluation of action as suggested by the logic

of appropriateness but internalization as habituation provides the condition that makes deliberation,

innovation and creativity possible.18 Here what the agents are doing is crucial, i.e. the particular

practices they are engaging, and not only what they believe. Norms and rules are not just shared mental

structures but create the social space within which agents act. At the same time these normative

structures are maintained and changed by the action of individuals and groups. Both formal and

informal institutions are fundamentally social and depend on the ongoing reproduction through

14 Sending (2002, 460). 15 For example, in order to adapt the role of a student, I have to be able to distinguish an educational institution from other social realms such as a courtroom. Adopting the role of a student and the behavioral standards that come with this role requires knowledge about the difference between institutions and corresponding roles. 16 Bourdieu (1977, 164). 17 Berger and Luckman (1967:54). They call the process by which behavioral patterns become embedded in the general knowledge stock of individuals “habitualization” Berger and Luckman (1967, 53). 18 Berger and Luckman (1967, 54).


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practices which makes them more or less resilient.19 This has led Ted Hop to argue that “habits and

routines” should receive a more prominent place in the analysis of international relations. Habits, as

automatic and unreceptive responses to environmental stimuli, are fundamentally biased towards the

status quo. Habits provide “the cognitive foundation for self‐fulfilling prophecies”20 thus they reduce

uncertainty, impose limits of the possibility of rational cost‐benefit calculation and in a more

fundamental sense challenge us to rethink agency.21

It is problematic though, to jump from the insight that institutional stability (and thus success) depends

on a deep internalization of norms and standards of behavior to the conclusion that compliance is

therefore automatic. Rather, as post‐structuralists have shown, at any point in time competing

discursive and institutional frameworks exist that provide room for maneuver, which challenge habits

and force us to reflect on behavioral routines. For example, as Anne Orford has forcefully argued, the

discourse on human rights not only empowers the individual as the holder of rights and obligations in

domestic and international politics but the corresponding notion of sovereignty as responsibility to

protect also enables new authority claims on behalf of the individual by states and international

organizations alike.22

Poststructuralists approach social order as manifestations of symbolic structures, or discourses. The

focus here is on discursive practices of representation (how international relations is thought and talked

about).23 Central to their work in IR is the analysis of normalizing discursive structures such as

“sovereignty” and “conflict and cooperation” within which the distinction between domestic order and

international anarchy is constructed. But as Neumann argues, discourses are not just theoretical

statements but intimately linked to how people act in relation to their environment, in short, to social

practices.24 It is through discourse that meanings and identities take on the appearance of fixity. They

create the illusion of natural categories (and subjects) that exist and have always existed therefore

naturalizing and normalizing identities.

Here international institutions are manifestations of a discourse that simultaneously reaffirms the

distinction of domestic and international (e.g. through sovereignty) and challenges it through a growing

19 Wendt (1992). 20 Hopf (2010, 3). 21 Hopf (2010). 22 Orford (2011). 23 Walker (1993); Walker (2002); Doty (1996); Der Derian (1987); Debrix (1999); Ashley (1987). More recently Hansen (2006); Neumann (2002); Neumann and Sending (2007). 24 Neumann (2002).


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web of norms and international institutions that build on international interdependence.25 In particular,

post‐structuralists highlight the indeterminacy of discursive practice. “Practice contains a signifying

element, i.e. in order to have any meaning at all a practice must signify something. Practices are

generally embedded in discourse(s) which enable particular meaning(s) to be signified. However,

discourses do not mechanically or instrumentally produce practices, nor do practices mechanically or

instrumentally reproduce a particular discourse. Rather there is a dimension of indeterminacy or “play”

to practices. What they signify is never straightforward.”26

The deconstruction of taken for granted categories and the emphasis on discourse as location and

source of power is thus crucial in understanding the ongoing construction of social reality.

There is thus a tension in constructivist approaches that centers on the question of whether or not

stability or instability is the fundamental problem of social life and how to conceptualize agency.27 On

one hand, scholars rightfully emphasize the importance of norms, routines, cognitive schemas and

repetition for social action. Without some common base of understanding and shared expectations even

the simplest social activity (such as coordinating on which side of the road to drive) would collapse. This

is highlighted in the research into ontological security, which argues that identities depend on basic trust

systems and routines form their basic stability and security.28 If stability is the norm, explaining change

becomes the real challenge.

On the other hand, scholars, drawing on linguistic analysis, emphasize the inherent instability of

meaning, the importance of contingency and permanence of change and indeterminacy inherent in

social structures. For those scholars stability itself, the relative permanence of existing social relations,

becomes the problem to be explained. Since stability is the result and enactment of a particular

configuration of power and interests in a “dominant discourse”, post‐structuralists also raise attention

to the role that scholarly representations of social processes play in the process of construction of social

reality.

This concern is shared by the more recent turn to practice theory and practical knowledge in social

theory generally and IR specifically. In contrast to post‐structuralisms’ “decentered” subject and interest

in discursive formations, practice theorists are concerned with the ability of agents to navigate the 25 Neumann (2002); Neumann and Sending (2007); Debrix (1999). 26 Doty (1997, 377). 27 The difference is also a reflection of different ontological and epistemological commitments. Though I follow the argument that in order to address this tension and reflect on these frameworks, it is not necessary to also evaluate and judge their underlying philosophical commitments. Monteiro and Ruby (2009). 28 Mitzen (2006).


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changing social environment and the order that emerges through practices. Since practice theorists

emphasize the multiplicity and intersecting nature of structures and resources, social reproduction is

never automatic. As Sewell argues, “Placing the relationship between resource and cultural schemas at

the center of a concept of a structure makes it possible to show how social change, no less than social

stasis, can be generated by the enactment of structures of social life.”29

2.2TheMovetoPracticeandPracticalKnowledge

The call for a “practice turn in IR”, most recently advocated for by Pouliot and Adler, engages a long

tradition of criticism directed against the way social sciences approach and represent social action. 30

Social scientists are interested in generalization, which poses the danger of ignoring the disparate and

conflicting practices that are at the core of complex social structures and corresponding institutions.

Critics of the “science model” of social science argue that social action is always context dependent and

no rule sets can capture the even the simplest forms of actions that people conduct on an everyday

basis.31 To put it differently, the actual experience of social life and the generative logic that gives raise

to actions in the first place is fundamentally at odds with the generalized (theoretical) representations

that social scientists produce.

Arguably, this tension between (1) the theoretical presentation of practice and (2) the generative logic

of practices that gives rise to “practical knowledge” is similar in nature to the agency‐structure debate in

that it cannot be completely resolved. Indeed, there is disagreement among practice theorists what the

status of practical knowledge is, how it relates to practices of representation and how it should be

studied. Below I argue that any attempt at resuscitating the practical and tacit dimension of human

experience as a solution to overcoming the theory/practice divide needs to recognize the

interrelationship of practices and their representation. To put it differently, by trying to eliminate the

analytic distinction between theoretical representation and practice by resurrecting practical

knowledge, one risks the reproduction of this distinction instead.32 Moreover, studying institutional

design through the practice of designing needs to account for the effect of pre‐existing social relations

and structures on the agent and, at the same time, recognize the ability of the agent to take charge,

29 Sewell (2005, 143). 30 Pouliot (2008); Adler and Pouliot (2011); Pouliot (2007); Pouliot (2010). 31 In IR see for example Pouliot (2008); Adler and Pouliot (2011); Neumann (2002); Neumann and Sending (2007); Doty (1997); Hansen (2006); Jackson (2008); Williams (2007). More generally see Bourdieu (1977); Bourdieu (1990); Bourdieu (2000) Reckwitz (2002); Schatzki (1996); Schatzki (2002); Schatzki, Knorr‐Cetina, and Savigny (2001); Turner (1994). 32 See Pouliot (2008, 276) for an example of this problem.


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interpret, and to some degree control his or her social environment through abstract representations of

her experience.

It is out of this tension between individual goal oriented actions, norm‐following behavior and the taken

for granted structures of any particular social field that institutions are created. It is therefore important

to address these tensions head on rather than obscure them by assuming a quasi‐ teleological processes

driving institutional emergence, or to attribute successful institutional creation to the right combination

of interests and power as recognized and realized by rational decision makers. This is the advantage of

practice theory: It shifts the analytic focus to the process of creating a shared understanding out of the

disparate experience of individual agents. It thus preserves a sensibility to individual agents engaging in

strategic action without losing sight of the larger social structures that give raise to the resources

(material and ideational) that individual employ in achieving their goals.

As part of the practice turn, authors in different disciplines and theoretical orientations have turned

their attention to what people do in particular instances of social interaction and in particular to the

experiential and tacit knowledge forms that agents utilize in action.33 Such accounts often trace their

inspiration to Wittgenstein’s observations on language. In particular influential is his discussion of

language as a “game” that cannot be mastered through the acquisition of a complex system of rules but

only through interaction and use. Meaning is not fixed in linguistic structures but the result of

“structured and purposive activities within which they are used”.34 In other words, any given activity

cannot be reduced to the linguistic representation of it. This is why Wittgenstein explicitly distinguishes

rules immanent in practice from the belief to follow a rule as an act of interpretation.35

Other practice theorists take their starting point from Ryle’s observation that “knowing how” to do

something (e.g., in the sense of being able to swim) is radically different from “knowing that” following a

certain procedure results in a specific outcome (e.g., moving your arms and legs in a certain way in the

water will allow you to stay afloat).36 Echoing Wittgenstein’s observation that rules are indeterminate,

Ryle argues that knowledge of the physical and social world is a bodily experience that escapes rule

determination.37

33Wittgenstein (1984). 34 Sewell (2005, 336). 35 Wittgenstein (1984, §197 ‐ 202). 36 Ryle (1984, 29ff). 37 For a philosophical defense of “knowing that” see Stanley and Williamson (2001).


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The observations that there is a tacit dimension to human action and understanding has also been taken

up by the sociology of scientific knowledge. 38 Pioneered in part by Polanyi’s study of how tacit

knowledge and “learning by doing” are central to a scientist’s capacity to engage in research.39 As Collins

argues, “Informed by the idea that there was a tacit dimension to experimental skills, however,

sociologists were able to understand that it was difficult to repeat experiments, that it was, therefore,

difficult to test experiments, that scientific skills require continual repair and maintenance provided by

the embedding community, and that technical skills might die out if they were not continually refreshed

by practice.”40 Thus, the research on scientific practice arose in response to the claim that the transfer of

scientific knowledge and the replication of scientific experiments is an unproblematic act of theory

formation and description.41

What all these different approaches to practical knowledge and tacit skills have in common is, on the

one hand, a self‐reflective and critical stance towards the kind of knowledge that scientists produce

about the social word; and, on the other hand, a more general skepticism of the ability of explicit

knowledge (as a system of justified true believes that can be captured in rules and propositions) to

provide an adequate determination for or an account of what agents actually do when they for example

negotiate treaties, design voting rules or, on a more mundane level, go to school. Practice approaches

challenge what Theodore Schatzki calls a “representational theory of action” which conceives action as

the applied combination of identifiable (or representable) individual mental states (needs, beliefs,

desires, intentions) and social mental states (values, norms, schemes).42 The critical stance of practice

approaches to the scholarly representation of social action is thus guided by three argumentative

moves. First, practices are never completely determined by representable mental states. Second,

agents’ posses a specifically practice oriented (a practical) knowledge. Third, representations of practice

(and the knowledge that guides them) remain necessarily incomplete.

Beyond a shared analytic commitment to the tacit dimensions of action, there is considerable difference

what authors consider “practical knowledge’. Indeed, a close look at the existing literature reveals that

no unified understanding of the knowledge that guides practices (practical knowledge) exists, nor is

there consensus on how we should go about to study it. Accounts of practical knowledge vary from

38 Knorr‐Cetina (1999); Latour (1987); Latour and Woolgar (1986). 39 Polanyi (1966) but also Polanyi (1958). 40 Collins (2001, 109). 41 Latour (1992); Collins (2001, 109). 42 Schatzki (1997). In IR Pouliot (2008; Pouliot (2010) uses the concept of representational bias to criticize conventional social theory.


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emphasis on specific motor skills and bodily dispositions that cannot be translated into rules (know how

versus knowing that) to accounts that locate the source of practical knowledge in traditions and culture

as the basis for the everyday improvisation of social interaction (habit).43 Sometimes practical

knowledge is attributed to the location within and experience of particular physical environments.

However such “local knowledge” can but does not need to be tacit. Such is the example that James Scott

gives of a villager who saves the crop of his mango tree from the invasion of red ants by fostering a

counter invasion by a “hostile” black ant colony.44

The different approaches and definitions of practical knowledge are partly due to the nature of the

subject, as many practice accounts contest the ability of theoretical representations to do justice to the

accomplishment and creativity involved in even mundane human action. They thus develop an account

of practical knowledge in the particular social domain under investigation.45 In other words, the

distinctions are driven by the different kinds of phenomena that the authors seek to address and the

contexts in which these phenomena are embedded. At the same time the conflation of different forms

practical knowledge (physical skills, intuition, emotions, background knowledge/ habitus) also obscures

the different way that knowledge is expressed, acquired, and employed.46 That there is a range of

different understandings of practical knowledge out there suggests the need for a more systematic

approach to the study of representation and practice.

Pouilot, for example, defines practical knowledge, as a “practical sense” that is ontologically prior to

other logics of action.47 According to Pouilot, “Whether called metis, tacit knowing, background,

experiential way of knowing or else, this stock of unspoken know‐how learned in a through practice and

from which conscious deliberation and action become possible can conveniently be called practical

knowledge.”48 In contrast to “representational knowledge” which he defines as conscious, verbalizable,

43 Nyiri (1988); Hopf (2010). 44 Scott (1998, 333 ff.). 45 See Geertz (1973) argument for thick description. For an application see Livingston (2006). 46 Organizational theory and management studies have been obsessing over the different kinds of knowledge, how to codify and capture tacit knowledge in order to improve “knowledge management”. Here too scholars come to different conclusions regarding the status of practical and tacit knowledge in relation to representational knowledge. For examples of the debate see Baumard (1996); Baumard (1999); Nonaka (1994); Chia and Holt (2009). 47 Pouliot (2008, 276‐77). He claims that practical sense is ontologically prior or generative of all conscious and reflective action “whether it stems from the logic of consequences, the logic of appropriateness or the logic of arguing.” 48 Pouliot (2008, 270).


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and intentional, practical knowledge is always tacit, and inarticulate, and its application is both

contextual and automatic.

Pouliot’s sophisticated reconstruction of practical knowledge is indicative of the problem one faces

when distinguishing practical knowledge from other forms of taken for granted background conditions

such as habits and routines and assigning it not only ontological priority but also a different

epistemological status from representational knowledge. Pouliot argues that the “logic of practicality”

helps agents “unconsciously” decide whether a given context “calls for instrumental rationality, norm

compliance or communicative action”49. He criticizes the argument that practical knowledge is the result

of norm‐internalization or learning, an assumption that is said to reflect an entrenched

“representational bias’. In contrast, Pouliot states that practical knowledge is inherently tacit.

Competence acquisition is therefore implicit without “explicit teaching or reflexive compliance”50.

Indeed, in order to maintain a logical distinction between practical knowledge and representational

knowledge, the former cannot very well have been “explicit” at one point in time.

According to Pouliot practical knowledge is something actors absorb through participation and

observation. Note however the tension between a practical knowledge (and a practical sense) that is

absorbed and transformed into practical mastery on the one hand (and thus in his example of diplomacy

generates a predisposition for “reasoned dialogue’), and the fundamental practical sense that manifests

itself only in doing something (practicing). Similarly, if knowledge is absorbed in interaction and applied

automatically (without thought), and this knowledge is generated by social structures, what space that

does this leave for human agency?

Pouliot’s argument seems to be based on reversing the standard value attached to explicit and practical

knowledge. If representational knowledge is not superior to the practical sense that actors employ, then

it must be subordinated to it. However, reducing human inter‐actions completely to the tacit

understanding in relation to the particular presuppositions of the social game inadequately simplifies

the variety of factors that contribute to actions and result in their representation. I argue below that to

capture the creative potential and agentic view of social life that practice theories seek to rescue, one

has to take into account the role that reflexivity, interpretation, and representation plays in structuring

the temporal and social space that agents engage in. Practical knowledge is not reducible to – but

neither is it separate from – representational knowledge. In short, one has to take serious the

49 Pouliot (2008, 276). 50 Pouliot (2008, 276).


15

limitations that Bourdieu imposes on the habitus as a strategy generating principle of dispositions that

nevertheless leaves the actual realization of those dispositions in practices undetermined.

Indeed Ryle’s example of a boy learning a complex game like chess does not start with the implicit

absorption but with a more conventional “teaching” of the rules. Ryle argues that this relationship

between teaching and skill acquisition is not necessary. It should also be possible to learn by

observation. I take this example to mean that social actors can negotiate even unfamiliar social terrain

by relying on imitation and observation and their ability of interpretation and sense making. However, it

does not demonstrate the derivate nature of representational knowledge in skill acquisition or social

interaction. The boy who is learning chess without being taught has a prior stock of knowledge about

games, rules and social interaction that help organize the reaction of the players and decisions over

moves. Moreover, if pressed the boy would surely be able to convey some simple rules of the game

(that white figures belong to one player, black figures to another) or even teach some version of it to his

friends, even though he may fail to deduce all the rules that comprise “chess” as we know it. In other

words, the relationship between representation and practice is far from unidirectional.

To consider another example: An expert swimmer has an intuitive sense of the relationship of her body

to the water which cannot be taught. There is no doubt that swimming is best learned by doing

(practicing) and that some may fail to obtain expert skills even with repeated practice. The “feeling” for

moving through the water does not exist prior to one acquiring this skill. It is intrinsic to the practice

itself. Arguably though, the supervision and guidance of experienced swimmers helps make skill

acquisition a safer and potentially more efficient and effective process then arriving at swim mastery

through trial and error.

Pouliot’s treatment of practical knowledge thus confirms the insight that drives the practice turn,

namely the recognition of a fundamental indeterminacy of social action. No rule system can capture or

determine all possible moves in a social game. However, affirming the practical competence of agents

(their intuitive sense of the social and physical environment) and asserting that human behavior cannot

be captured by even the most detailed systems of rules is analytically different from asserting a primacy

of tacit over representational knowledge. Indeed, the notion of a “sense of the game” already signals

that it is not a general sense of life, but a knowledge of a particular social situation (or physical

challenge), that can be (albeit imperfectly) described.


16

PracticebetweenMetisandHabitus

The problem arising out of Pouliot’s treatment of practical knowledge might become clear if we

recognize that the literature approaches practical knowledge from two different angles. The first

approach focuses on the analysis of cognitive and physical skills possessed by an individual and

expressed in reactions to the environment and most prominently displayed in encounters with the

unexpected. Here practical knowledge manifests itself only in a specific social and temporal location.

This is what Detienne and Vernant expertly capture in their fascinating account of metis, or cunning

intelligence.51 Metis is not reflexive in the sense of entailing conscious concern with values or norms or

social practice. It is, however, goal driven and manifests itself in confrontations with the unforeseen

itself. Here an agent is aiming simply deal with or control the unforeseen, to trap, subdue or master the

elusive objects of her desire.52 Metis arises out of practical experience. In this sense it is local and

limited. It includes (but is not reducible to) a combination of learned skills. Metis is necessarily tacit as

the situation and object of its application is fundamentally unstable and elusive. Any translation of it into

rules means detaching it from the very experience that it generated. In other words, when it is

transformed from tacit into representational knowledge it loses its specific practice orientation on which

improvisation and innovation is based.53 A good example might be Bismarck, whose skill at diplomacy

cannot be reduced to the rules of “realpolitik”.54

On the other hand, authors discuss “practical knowledge” not as metis but as an embodied collective

knowledge, drawing on Bourdieu’s concept of the habitus. 55 Habitus is understood as an embodied

system of durable, transposable dispositions that serve to generate and structure practices and as well

as representations, thus it is a “strategy generating principle’.56 Because the habitus is internalized

(literally embodied), it is “objectively adapted to their goals without presupposing a conscious aiming at

ends or an express mastery of the operation necessary to attain them”.57 Practices are the result of the

51 Detienne and Vernant (1991). 52 The prosaic language comes with the term. Detienne and Vernant (1991); Nussbaum (1986, 19‐20). 53 For an empirical account of how metis affects and operates in organizations see Baumard (1996); Baumard (1999). He argues that leadership in business organizations requires flexible responses to changes in the environment as well as innovation and institutional learning. All crucially depend on an organizations ability to recognize and rely on the rule breaking ability that is part of metis as valuable and allow for its application. See also Collins (2001) 54 I thank Keven Ruby for pointing me to this example. 55 Adler and Pouliot (2011) refer to practices as something akin to common knowledge, and focal points of action. Habitus though corresponds more to an embodied version of Wendt (1999) collective knowledge. 56 Bourdieu (1977, 9,18). 57 Bourdieu (1977:72).


17

dialectic relationship of objectified products of practices (social fields and structures) and individually

incorporated products of experiences and historical practices (habitus).

The habitus as a strategy‐generating principle allows agents to act in specific social contexts (or fields)

and cope with continuously changing situations in that context.58 The logic of practice is based on a

practical sense that can be compared to intuition, or feeling for the social game in contrast to the

knowledge or formulation of abstract rules.59 Habitus and the resulting strategies for action are products

of past practices or experiences but also reproduce and sustain the structure of those past actions in the

present.

The structural equivalent to individual habitus is informal and formal institutions. Like habitus,

institutions are objectifications of history that are in fact closely tied to and upheld by individual

practice. Indeed, the habitus makes it possible to “inhabit institutions, to appropriate them practically,

and so to keep them in activity, continuously pulling them from the state of dead letters, reviving the

sense deposited in them, but at the same time imposing revisions and transformations that reactivation

entails”.60 To put it differently, individually embodied rules of the social game enables institutions to be

practically realized.

Since the habitus is product of past practices and personal experiences it is used (both by Bourdieu and

by his readers) to emphasize the reproductive tendencies of social order. For example, Chia and Holt,

drawing on Bourdieu, argue that “human action must be understood in terms of a sociality of inertia:

cultural transmissions, socialization, institutionalization, disciplinary regimes, etc., ensure a regularity of

behavior that makes the latter more or less socially predictable; a modus operandi and hence “strategy”

is apparent even though the agent may be unaware of it.”61

However, in order to preserve a separate logic of practice that operates as an ongoing and tacit

improvisation, practices have to remain fundamentally indeterminate. First, this means the habitus is a

system of dispositions it steers but does not determine actions. Thus as a conceptual tool it allows us to

analyze and interpret but not to predict action. Second, no actor “owns” her habitus completely in the

sense that she has conscious control over it. Rather, the habitus remains a pre‐discursive sense that is

crucial for agents’ ability to navigate both routines and disruptions of the social environment. Third, the

meaning of a practice is established intersubjectively because no one individual has exclusive control

58 Bourdieu (1977:79). 59 Lamaison and Bourdieu (1986). 60 Bourdieu (1990, 57). 61 Chia and Holt (2009, 130). Emphasis in the original.


18

over its interpretation.62 It is the result of an aggregation of individual practices by which individuals act

within the confines of social structures and habitus to further their individual goals. Fourth, practices are

highly contextual and unfold in time and space.63 The particular historical and social context thus

challenges actors to strategize, use available resources and to reflect on their practice. The actor’s

practical knowledge or “sense of the game” depends on her relation with other individuals because the

realm of possible actions, the game itself and its presuppositions, become established through

interaction.64

In discussing the habitus and applying it as an analytic category one has to recognize its limit as a

“strategy‐generating principle’. Indeed, Bourdieu cautions that “science should not aim to adopt the

practical logic for itself, but to reconstruct that knowledge theoretically… To do this requires a constant

effort of reflexivity…”65 Reducing the analysis of practice to background knowledge (a term that is used

by Pouliot and Adler) that “causes” actors to “feel” how to behave seems incompatible with the

dynamic of a knowledge that manifests itself in practices. Since the habitus is tacit, prediscursive,

relational and contextual, its operation can only be observed in the play of practice. This leaves us again

with the question of how we are to study and understand the incredible ability of agents to react, adapt

and improvise in their navigation of the continuously changing contingencies of everyday life. And how

can we understand the simultaneous production of the social environment as something stable that

imposes objective constraints on our goals and ambitions. In short, how can we reconcile deliberation

and agency of institutional designers with the social relations, and hierarchies institutional design seeks

to preserve only to produce new lines of conflict? In order to address those questions I shift the focus

from habitus and tacit knowledge to the actual location within which practice take place and the

struggle over meaning via representation.

3OnPracticalKnowledgeandtheProcessandPracticeofInstitutionalDesign

Studying practices specifically practices of institutional design, and the kind of knowledge that agents

employ in navigating their environment raises the problem of how to understand the relationship of

institutional designers to the pre‐existing institutional environment. In order to understand the practices

of designing, I rely on Bourdieu’s conceptual apparatus to study practices, and their generative logic.

62 Bourdieu (1977), Bourdieu and Wacquant (1992, 135‐6). 63 Bourdieu (1977:9). 64 “Doxa is the relationship of immediate adherence that is established between habitus and the field to which it is attuned. The pre‐verbal taken‐for‐granted of the world that flows from the practical sense.” Bourdieu (1990, 68). 65 Bourdieu (2000, 52‐54ff).


19

That means specifying not only what defines practical knowledge as opposed to conscious, intellectual

comprehension but more importantly the dynamics that define the social and temporal context within

which social action takes place.66 This also makes it possible to rethink the relationship between forms of

practical knowledge that reside in everyday action and rule‐oriented explicit knowledge that is (among

other things) used to justify, explain, generalize, and naturalize those actions and experiences. Finally, a

focus on the “generative logic of practice” as means to escape the representational bias (a phrase used

by Pouliot 2008) needs to be tempered by conscious recognition that any representation of practice is

exactly that, a practice of representation that sounds out the boundaries of accepted (social) scientific

research.

In the following I will argue for understanding agency via an integrative approach to practical

knowledge. I argue that agency is local and limited yet also strategic and representational. Agency is

limited because all practices are intrinsically bound to the location of their production and application.

That means institutional design practices need to be studied in the social space within which they take

place and the particular kind of game(s) that actors play. Second, agency is strategic because it involves

the pursuit of interests within the context of habitus, field and capital (material, cultural and symbolic

resources). Designing institutions is strategic because it involves the attempt to stabilize a particular set

of relations of power. Third, agency is representational because engaging with the world is not

thoughtless but involves articulation, interpretation, and contestation. However, because

representations are contested agency is socially constrained.

Indeed, emphasizing the qualitative difference and (analytic) independence of explicit/representational

and practical/tacit knowledge reproduces the division that it seeks to overcome and supports the often

claimed “special” character of theoretical knowledge legitimated by disciplinary practices of the various

sciences and academic disciplines. In contrast to this, I argue for a theory of practice that realizes the

interdependencies between (1) the representational knowledge produced by agents (be they scientific

observers or practitioners of international relations) that describe and reflect on actions about the social

world; and (2) the practical knowledge that individual brings to social interaction. It is the division of

practical from theoretical knowledge (by giving each a different epistemological status) that cements the

(scholarly) neglect of practices. An emphasis on practical knowledge cannot come at the expense of

representation. Representations are fundamental to the self‐understanding of individuals and groups.

66 Bourdieu (2000, 130)This means, we need to avoid the view that social reality is but the sum of its parts. A position most prominently associated with rational choice, but also foundational for ethnomethodologists such as Garfinkel (1984 [1967]).


20

Representational knowledge is crucial in the production of epistemological certainty, namely a “universe

of possible discourse” or the “game” that orients and structures the practices of individuals.67 As such

representations are, as for example Chakrabarty has shown, powerful in limiting who can speak and who

is spoken for. At the same time the practice of abstraction through generalization also makes it possible

to engage in critical readings of social injustice and plan possible futures. This tension can never be fully

resolved because abstractions from lived experience “produce forms of thought that ultimately

evacuate the place of the local … Such thought fundamentally tends to sever the relationship between

thought and modes of human belonging.”68

3.1StudyingtheLocationofAgency:TheSocialField

Crucial to understanding habitus and how it can be approached analytically is that its realization in

practice is intrinsically bound with the social location of its production and application. More specifically,

the habitus arises out of the particular social fields that agents participate in. Fields form a relatively

autonomous network of relations between different social positions and are characterized by a specific

logic that is irreducible to those that regulate other fields.69 Their autonomy is the result of patterned

activity or practices and actions that are structured around the distribution of different forms of capital

(whether cultural, symbolic, or economic). Conversely, the value and power of a particular combination

of capital depends on its relationship to specific fields of practice.70

A useful analogy to comprehend the organization and function of fields is to literally conceive of them as

the space and context within which a social game takes place. Characterizing those background

structures as “fields” is intended to capture the conflict over positions and capital that takes place within

them, and the struggle over autonomy vis‐à‐vis other social fields that takes place between them.

Indeed, it is the patterns of struggle that call attention to the existence of the social field and make them

analytically distinct from institutions (which are organized around basic functions) and social structures

more generally. 71

67 Bourdieu (1977, 169). 68 Chakrabarty (2000, 255). 69 Bourdieu and Wacquant (1992, 97). 70 Williams (2007, 33). 71 “The principle of the dynamics of a field lies in the form of its structure and, in particular, in the distance, the gaps, the asymmetries between the various forces that confront one another. The forces that are active in the field – and thus selected by the analyst as pertinent because they produce the most relevant differences – are those which define the specific capital. A capital does not exist and function except in relation to a field. … As a space of potential and active forces, the field is also a field of struggles aimed at preserving or transforming the configuration of these forces.” Bourdieu and Wacquant (1992, 101)


21

Fields are fundamentally relational in that their autonomy, the result of a differentiation process to

other social spaces. Fields can be more or less institutionalized (by, for example, specifying entrance

barriers for participation). The logic of a specific field and what sets it apart from other social fields is a

set of specific taken for granted rules (embodied in the habitus). Bourdieu describes those rules of the

game as “doxa’, as all that which we tacitly accept as undisputed, uncontested, unthinkable. Doxa, or

what might more usefully be understood as a “regime of truth,” is analytically important not only

because it signifies the “uncontested acceptance of the daily lifeworld,” but because it contrasts to and

limits the realm of opinion and contestation. 72 Indeed, both the boundary of the realm of opinion (what

can legitimately be challenged) and its content (orthodoxy and heterodoxy) are the result of struggles of

legitimation over meaning and authority.

A soccer game is a simple example for the operation of a social field within which skilled players

(habitus) compete both for their team but also for their own individual status (interests) within the

team. The game itself is structured by a set of formal and informal rules that define the relationship of

the players to each other and the ball, delimit the area of playing, and designate authority for resolving

conflict. There is no question that competitive soccer is played with 11 players on a side, and that field

players are not allowed to engage the ball with their hand. This is not only stated in the formal rules, but

at a more fundamental level distinguishes soccer from football or other team sports. Fairness is another

fundamental rule, even though its application (for example, whether or not a specific event constitutes

foul play), as well as the enforcement of other rules and principles, remains debatable and a source of

conflict. It is this ambiguity that endows the referee with his authority, and his authority in turn depends

on affirming the shared understanding of the rules of the game.

3.2AgencyandWorldmaking

The habitus is not only a self‐reinforcing perceptual filter that allows an individual to assess a situation,

but simultaneously serves as a generator for schemas of action. The resulting practice is not determined

by the habitus but depends on the individuals’ ability to utilize both its prediscursive (or tacit) and

representational (or explicit) knowledge resources in navigating social interaction. This leads some

authors to emphasize those strategies emerging out of everyday coping situations that lead to a

superior (both for the individual and the group) if often unpredictable outcome. For example, in their

discussion of “strategy without design” Chia and Holt caution against “deliberated conscious design and

purposeful implementation from the top” and emphasize instead “the unconsciously acquired, culturally

72 Bourdieu and Wacquant (1992, 72).


22

shaped habits of acting,” or habitus.73 However, their account, like that of Pouliot, overlooks the logical

necessity that the existence and application of a pre‐discursive knowledge is not independent from an

agent’s ability to reflect on her own practices and adapt their behavior accordingly by, for example,

identifying a consistent pattern of behavior in the past to justify or legitimize future actions.74

It is not difficult to see the relevance of agency for institutional design since it constitutes and attempt

to assert control over the social environment and to structure it in such a way to obtain political, social,

economic ends. At the same time, institutional designers inhabit a social location and time. They act

through and interact with other formal and informal institutions that fundamentally shape what they

consider appropriate means to achieve certain ends, as well as what they consider appropriate ends in

the first place. Institutions are both generators and reproduces of routines and schemas for action that

stabilize particular social structures. Creating a new institution thus has important implications in either

formalizing an existing (informal) institution explicit or changing the structural components of a

particular field. Institutions entrench social hierarchies and, by becoming visible, become themselves

sites of contestation.

A field comes (analytically) alive through the practices of individuals who engage in a struggle over

resources, status, and power within it and at the same time articulate the existence of that field as

autonomous in relation to other social fields. Agents are motivated by a set of interests that arise out of

their participation in the field and their engagement with social structures overall. At the same time,

fields only exist if interests are pursued within them. This means that agency needs to be understood

locally, in relation to a particular field and its interaction with individual interests. Additionally, as I argue

below, agency needs to be understood as strategic and representational.

Agency is strategic in that it involves the pursuit of interests within the context of habitus, field, and

capital. Since the boundaries of the field are not fixed but depend instead on their (re)articulation

through practice, an understanding of agency as strategic presupposes a capacity for invention,

adaptation, and manipulation through which agents create and take advantage of opportunities to

engage within the social field.75 Strategies do not need to be conscious; indeed Bourdieu argues that the

most routine strategies are rooted in the tacit sense of the game.

73Chia and Holt (2009, 22‐3); Chia and Holt 22‐3). 74 Strategy without design is defined as “a latent and retrospectively identifiable consistence in the pattern of actions taken that produces desirable outcomes even though no one has intended or deliberatively planned for it to be so.” Chia and Holt (2009, 24). 75 Bourdieu (1977).


23

Nevertheless, agency is representational because people not only act but also justify and interpret their

action. They make and follow rules (laws), utter moral judgments about what is right and wrong, and,

perhaps more importantly, they are often (if not always) capable of explaining their actions and laying

out the process of their reasoning. Institutional designers do not only write or codify rules; they argue

about and compromise on specific solutions. Moreover, they reflect over the effect and implication of

existing institutions and future changes. In other words, interpretive and deliberative processes make

explicit the implicit understanding of the social world. The result of this process of articulation and

contestation is a political struggle of “worldmaking”. It is a political struggle because it involves “a

cognitive struggle (both practical and theoretical) for power to impose a legitimate vision of the social

world.”76 It is a struggle over what can legitimately be contested and what remains unspoken.

This struggle of worldmaking is crucial to understanding the relationship between a radically

intersubjective conceptions of agency and practice. Agency is not to be equated with individual mastery

of social life. Agency is limited and local because it is relational and structured by the social context the

individual is embedded in. This has been powerfully captured by Markell’s reading of Hannah Arendt’s

understanding of action and agency. For Markell, agency is not only affirmed by social interaction, and

thus inherently social, but is indeed also limited by this sociality since the outcome of the interaction

remains unpredictable and uncontrollable.77

Agency differs from practice in that it requires a reflexive engagement with dispositions and social

positions that structure one’s perception of the situation at hand. Indeed Bourdieu, when pressed by

Loic Wacquant on the status of agency and innovation in his theory, argues that a reflexive analysis of

the dispositions generated by the habitus makes it possible for an agent to alter the perception of the

situation which she confronts, and thereby to adjust available strategies. This reflexive potential allows

individuals not only to negotiate situations of crisis but to “actively determine, on the basis of these

socially and historically constituted categories of perception and appreciation, the situation that

determines them.”78 Bourdieu goes so far as to claim that “agents become something like ‘subjects’ only

to the extent that they consciously master the relation they entertain with their dispositions”.79 This

leads Sewell to define agency as arising “from the actor’s knowledge of schemas, which means the

ability to apply them to new contexts. Or, to the same thing the other way around, agency arises from

76 Bourdieu (2000, 185). 77 Markell (2003, 13); Markell (2006, 9). 78 Bourdieu and Wacquant (1992:136). 79 Bourdieu and Wacquant (1992, 137).


24

the actor’s control of resources, which means the capacity to reinterpret or mobilize an array of

resources in terms of schemas other than those that constituted the array”.80

Agency, then, is representational as it involves an engagement with dispositions, social position, and

taken for granted beliefs based on reflexivity. This interpretative act allows individuals to identify and

act upon, as well as cause interruptions of, daily routine. However, agency remains bound to the

embodied and tacit understanding of the social. It receives its strength and transformative potential

from social structures and past practices. While there can be differences in individuals’ potential to use

available cognitive and material resources to affect the social environment, an individual never owns her

actions completely. Foucault put it this way: “People know what they do; frequently they know why they

do what they do; but what they don’t know is what they do does”81. The implication of an action always

depends on intersubjective meanings established through social interaction.

3.3PracticingInstitutionalDesign

This conception of agency has important implications for studying the design of international

institutions. As agents of change, institutional designers are limited by their social and temporal

location, they are strategic and goal oriented, and they engage of practices of representation that in

turn affect how their own actions are remembered or forgotten. To understand institutional design

(both the process by which decisions over form are reached and the outcome of those decisions) it

needs to be studied in the temporal and social space that gives rise to the demand for an institution and

enables the pursuit of actual institutionalization. Approaching institutional design by locating it within a

social field thus shifts the attention to the conditions of possibility of negotiations and agreement over

rules. One can observe and analyze the strategies which agents employ in pursuit of their own self‐

interest and in realization of their own position vis‐à‐vis the field within which social action takes place.

Institutions are as much products of competition of conflict as they are sites within which conflict and

competition take place.

Central to the constraints that institutional designers face is the dynamic process of differentiation

within and between social fields as sites of struggle over autonomy and resources. Thinking, arguing,

and negotiating about institutional design is not only a process of aligning different interests, but also

involves an exploration of the boundaries of accepted discourse and contestation. Debates over design,

80 Sewell (2005, 144). 81 Foucault cited in “Michel Foucault: Beyond Structuralism and Hermeneutics” edited by Dreyfus and Rabinow (1982, 187 Foucault cited in )


25

over form, substance, and procedure are also creating the conditions of its own possibility. This is most

evident in the use that legal scholars make of history. Here the articulation of a demand for an

institution like the International Criminal Court creates its own precedent, and every subsequent

generation of institutional designers draws on the established authority of his predecessors to justify

deviations or assert continuity. The design process itself is an active attempt at world‐making whereby a

given institutional solution to a problem is constructed by institutional designers as a logical response –

by virtue of either instrumental necessity or normative desirability – to a given problem. The seeming

paradox of institutional innovations is being presented as both necessary and desirable breaks with the

status quo. At the same time, the result of ongoing processes of change is a direct result of institutions

being embodied depositories of social practices and abstract constructions that confront agents as

objects. However, even if the institutional innovation is represented and celebrated as normatively

desirable and progressive, it cannot escape the established power relations or hierarchies that it seeks

to regulate.

Challenging the established narrative requires locating the source of the accepted interpretation.

Representational knowledge is one instance of social practices produced in and validated by the

generative logic of the social field.82 Institutional design as a practice of representation delimits the

realm of contestation for socially acceptable behavior and constraints the possible realm of existing

justifications for actions. At the same time the indeterminacy of rules remain a source conflict and

struggle over meaning and legitimate interpretation. Determining the limits of what can and cannot be

said or thought and who is an authorized speaker is one hallmark of power and central to any attempt of

institutional creation.

Therefore, it is necessary to take seriously the account of how agents represent, justify and argue about

their own action and put it in relation to the social fields in which they participate. In short, we need to

study the particular narrative strategies they employ to achieve their goals. Tracing the recurrent

patterns of argument over time illustrates how a dominant narrative emerges and becomes integrated

in the general intersubjective construction of reality that affirms the autonomy of a social field (Doxa or

Regime of Truth).83 For example, the debates over international criminal law and responsibility show

clearly how the articulation and codification of norms through institutional design also cements the

inter‐dependent relationship of law and politics.

82 Bourdieu (2000, 135). 83 For a summary discussion of the different methods scholars have suggested in order to study and capture the practical sense that allows agents to act see Pouliot (2007); Pouliot (2010). See also Leander (2008).


26

4Conclusion

This paper discussed how to conceptualize the agency of institutional designers while recognizing the

limited control institutional designers have over the outcome (and institutional effects) of their actions. I

argued that a practical sense of understanding – a practical knowledge – plays an important role in

social interaction and thus grounds a social theory of institutional design. Equally important however are

practices of representations through which agents articulate claims, justify and interpret their own

actions and the actions of other social actors. Agency is representational because it is interpretive and

reflexive but at the same time, it is rooted in the concrete experience of the social. Incorporating this

tacit dimension of action challenges the definition of agency as freedom from structural constraints. It

also cautions us to avoid equating behavioral regularities in human interaction with identifiable rule

systems.

The representational and rule based knowledge (central to the explanatory project of social science) is a

retrospective description of behavioral regularities. Extrapolating from those retrospective descriptions

to the future not only ignores the importance of context but objectifies and perpetuates the conditions

it simply seeks to describe.84 This has led Alex Wendt to argue that thinking about institutional design as

deriving from the rational choice of states is alike to “driving to the rear view mirror”. He suggests

instead that future oriented design requires a specific kind of knowledge, namely “knowledge about

institutional effectiveness and knowledge about values”.85 However, as Koremenos, Lipson and Snidal

rightly point out in their response to Wendt, to give recommendations for institutional design we need

to know how institutions work and how institutions relate to other social actors. To put it differently, we

need to know how context (field, event) enables the articulation of a particular set of claims.

A practice approach refocuses our attention on what institutional designers do when they engage in

discussions over institutional rules, and norms. It shows their ability to look in the future as bound to the

particular social space that they inhabit. It is not only that their ability to look into the future is bound to

a time and space; agents’ ability to shape the future is a collective and not an individual ability. That

means even institutional rules and norms put in place do not determine their effect on society. The

symbolic power of institutional designers – based on both practices and representations that their

actions enable– is sure “to generate new claims, new proceedings, and new reforms and it may then

84 Foucault (1980); Flyvbjerg (2001); Cox (1996); Doty (1996); Ashley (1987). 85 Wendt (2001, 283).


27

become part of individuals (and perhaps states’) conceptual toolkit.”86 The effect of institutional change

and design is not bound to the sphere in which it takes place but can change how other actors view their

rights and the means they have available to act upon them.87

86 Hagan and Levi (2007). 87 Chakrabarty (2000) on the emancipatory potential of a universalizing discourse.


28

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