One Thing or Many?
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Social capital has no independent causal force within this body of social explanation. It is, as
Tarrow (1996: 396) has argued more broadly, “a by-product of politics, state building, and social
structure,” and not an independent cause of mutually beneficial collective action.
10
Fungibility is
maintained within this class of institutionalist explanations, but social capital has, at best, only a
residual role. We must look elsewhere, therefore, to find support for fungible social capital that
causes (and is not caused by) superior outcomes over multiple arenas.
S2. Institutions Evolving Without Optimality: In this second class of institutionalist
explanations, social conventions and norms develop as the unintended though quite welcome
products of repeated social interaction. Seeking to deal with the problem of anarchy, individuals,
after trial-and-error, converge upon some concept of just behavior, and this shared concept,
through repetition and habit, assumes the force of a norm, convention or focal point (Berger and
Luckmann 1966; Schelling 1960).
The selection of focal points can follow criteria that are hard to determine in advance. "In a
world where we often cannot predict each other’s reactions, norms provide much-needed rules of
thumb, and focal points lend a degree of inflexibility and commitment which form the basis of
our binding agreements" (Bardhan 1993: 636). Frequently mentioned examples of this logic
include the QWERTY keyboard and right-hand vs. left-hand driving rules, none of which are in
any sense optimal, but which all assist in providing much-needed coordination.
Another body of institutional theory, represented by Herbert Simon, James March and Johan
Olsen, describe a logic of behavior in organizational settings that is quite similar to the foregoing
Convention