OVERVIEW

This book is concerned with contemporary social institutions that are also complex organizations or systems of organizations. Thus its field of concern includes governments, police services, business corporations, universities, welfare institutions, and the like; it also includes criminal justice systems (comprised of a police organization, courts, correctional facilities, etc.), legal systems (comprised of a legislature, the law, courts, legal firms, etc.), financial systems (comprised of retail and investment banks, a stock exchange, regulators, auditing firms, etc.), and so on. On the one hand, it offers a general theory of social institutions – a teleological account, according to which all social institutions exist to realize various collective ends, indeed, to produce collective goods. On the other hand, it provides special theories of particular institutions, for instance, a theory of government.

Lest this field of concern appear too broad, and hence the ambitions of this book overblown, let me immediately add that the theories on offer are philosophical and, as a consequence, foundational and synoptic in character. Moreover, these theories are normative accounts of some contemporary social institutions, not accounts of all social institutions, both past and present. Much less are these theories descriptive or normative accounts of all organizations and associations; private clubs with restricted entry, for example, lie outside the scope of the normative theory of contemporary social institutions.