Institutions, Institutional Changes and Modernization: A Conceptual Framework

Abstract

The history of human civilization has been a history of organized human behavior. How are people organized? What are their goals or objectives? What are their mental and physical capabilities? What is the natural environment? These are questions of essential relevance to a good understanding of any specific human behavior, including economic activities, social and political changes, modernization, and the development of human civilization in general. If we accept the presumption that all humans have similar behavioral goals since they have universally similar needs and largely similar desires, and if we believe that different peoples potentially have essentially equal mental and physical capabilities, then variations in human behavior and their consequences can be sufficiently explained by variations in their organizational structures or their institutional arrangements.1 Basic questions in the study of modernization — What is the goal of modernization? How does a nation get there? — can, therefore, be adequately addressed if we can ascertain the domestic organizational structure of a group of people or a nation.