9Learning objectives Social and Institutional Change
Session 1 – Introduction and overview
Introduction to the course, an overview of the sessions, information about course requirements,
schedule, and exam.
Session 2 – The micro-macro problem
Understand why we need sociology: The study of social facts;
• Sociology: the field that studies so-called social facts (definition of Durkheim).
• Society: not a simple collection of individuals, but is a collectivity with its own characteristics.
It includes social relationships, social patterns, and forms of organization and these collective
forces independently regulate individual and group behavior.
• Social fact: social facts include all the ways in which social structures and social norms and
collective expectations constrain social behavior. → macro-phenomena.
• Need for sociology: even good understanding of individuals will not help explaining macro-
phenomena.
• Structural approach: collective/macro phenomena can and should only be explained with
other collective/macro phenomena.
Understand the core problem of sociology: the micro-macro problem;
• The structural-individualistic research program (SIP): collective phenomena can and should
be explained by drawing on the micro-level.
Understand the core methodological arguments about how to tackle the micro-macro problem;
• Criticism of the structural-individualistic research program:
o It suggest that all individuals behave and decide in the same way
o There is no interaction → actors decide in isolation.
• Difference to Durkheim: whole is not different from the sum + no interdependencies among
individuals.
• Durkheim argued that interdependencies between individuals are critical.
Understand the concept of emergence.
• Emergence: the interplay of individual behavior can create patterns which cannot be directly
inferred from the motives of the individuals.
• There are collective phenomena which are not necessarily the consequence of individual
motives.
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, • Example of emerge: residential segregation
o Dissimilarity: proportion of individuals that would have to move in order to
achieve perfect ethnic unity of neighborhoods.
o Isolation: tendency of persons to live in a neighborhood where their share is
above the city average.
o → in US segregation has declined: change in law, easing of credit standards,
interregional migration, massive housing projects, inflow of foreign-born
residents.
o Emerging phenomenon: residential segregation of income → mensen met een
laag inkomen wonen bij elkaar en mensen met een hoog inkomen wonen bij
elkaar.
o Schelling’s model of residential segration: The city of schellingdale: er zal
altijd segregatie zijn in een stad. Even when individuals didn’t mind being
surrounded or living by agents of a different race of economic background,
they would still choose to segregate themselves from other agents over
time!
- Residential segregation is an emergent phenomenon (→ the whole is more than the
sum of its parts, Durkheim)
Session 3 - Informal institutions and the question why people cooperate – guest lecture by Jonas
Stein
Introduction to one of the biggest scientific puzzles: the basic problem of social order;
• Weber: focus is on the micro-level. Sociology is concerned with individuals’ social action
and interaction.
• Thomas Hobbes: pessimistic view, people are egoistic, people are trying to survive and
you have to compete. → war against all. His solution: The Leviathan → je moet vredig
naast elkaar leven, dan is de war against all niet meer nodig.
• Parson: main research question in the social sciences.
• Explanations for cooperation:
o The state
o Self-interest: fear of punishment from others
o Norms
o Preference for fairness
Understand why the prisoner’s dilemma is a dilemma;
• The nash equilibrium (the rational strategies) is not the pareto optimum, where the
agents would have a higher reward. If both actors cooperate they are better off than in
the Nash equilibrium. However, when both cooperate, both have an incentive to defect
(to get T).
• Example: doping in sport.
o Nash equilibrium: we moeten allemaal geen drugs gebruiken
o Als iemand wel aan doping begint, moet je uiteindelijk zelf ook omdat je anders
erg achter gaat lopen. → slechtste optie.
• Example: who does the dishes?
o Iedereen doet op gevoel voor iedereen de afwas. Uiteindelijk doet iedereen
niets, dus gebeurt er niets. Als je wel zelf gaat afwassen, maar als je huisgenoten
niets doen is dat ook niet leuk. Als iedereen wel de afwas doet, doe je zelf mee.
• Example: keeping the environment clean
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, Understand the core concepts of game theory (interdependence, best response, Nashequilibrium,
Pareto optimum);
• Game: situation where (at least) two actors have to decide between (at least two)
strategies and the agent’s payoffs depend on their own decision and the decision of the
other agent(s).
• Interdependence: situations where payoffs do not only depend on what ego chooses but
also on the choices of at least one other person.
• Best response: temptation > reward > punishment > sucker’s payoff
• Nash equilibrium: the strategy combination, in which no player can get a better payoff by
switching to some other strategy while the other player does not change her decision.
• Pareto-optimal: a game’s outcome is a pareto-optimum if there is no alternative strategy
combination where at least one player can achieve a better payoff and the other player’s
payoff is not decreasing.
Why and under what conditions can conditional strategies help solve the prisoner’s dilemma?
• The prisoner’s dilemma is infinitely repeated. If the agents use conditional strategies,
then their decisions have effects on future payoffs. These future payoffs are an incentive
to cooperate (expecting that you defect next round if I defect now, I might decide to
cooperate now). Future payoffs are less worth than current payoffs.
• Unconditional strategies: always cooperate, always defect, random.
• Conditional strategies: TIT FOR TAT, TIT FOR TWO TATS
• TIT FOR TAT: starts with cooperation and then always does what the other chose in the
previous period. It is based on the concepts of retaliation and altruism. It emphasizes
cooperation between parties and produces a more favorable outcome than a non-
cooperative strategy.
• Repeating the game can lead to cooperation when agents use conditional strategies.
• Backward-induction: most games are not played forever, in the final period a smart
player would defect. If you know that the other player is going to defect in the last
round, what are you going to choose in the round before? You would defect…. This
reasoning can be continued until the first round.
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