In this note we outline a vision on standards for sociology. The occasion is given us by the 25th anniversary of the European Academy of Sociology (EAS), an institution that aims to promote those standards. We first revisit the founding aims of EAS and evaluate the extent to which they have been realized. We then consider the challenges and opportunities currently facing sociology and the social sciences more broadly and propose three key principles to advance disciplinary standards in sociology. These key principles concern the integration of theory and empirics, open science practices, and engagement with wider societal debates. We conclude by calling for unity in basic disciplinary standards agreed upon by the sociological community, alongside diversity in research questions and methods to foster creative sociological explanations and descriptions.

Spontaneous order is the keystone idea in Hayek’s thought and it is at the basis of his reflections on the market, the State, and the law. Among the scholars that have been influenced by Hayek, Sugden is one of the most concerned with such an idea. Indeed, he has recently reaffirmed that the Austrian scholar influenced his understanding of the market as a spontaneous order. For this reason, the paper aims to provide a reading of Hayek’s spontaneous order theory through Sugden’s contribution on the matter. In addition to outlining the origins of the concept, the paper highlights similarities and differences in the thinking of the two scholars in order to explore some hidden features of Hayek’s spontaneous order through Sugden’s conceptualisation, which helps to ‘de-ideologise’ Hayek’s alleged ideological justification for capitalism.

To understand how social media shapes online discourse or contributes to polarization, we need models of collective online choice that link users’ behavioral adaptation to the emergence of complex and dynamic digital environments. This study develops a dynamic model of platform selection based on Social Feedback Theory, using multi-agent reinforcement learning to capture how user decisions are shaped by past rewards across platforms. A key parameter ( μ ) governs whether users seek approval from like-minded peers or exposure to opposing views. Agent-based simulations combined with dynamical-systems analysis reveal a social dilemma: even when users value diversity, collective dynamics can trap online environments in polarized echo chambers that reduce overall user satisfaction. Above a critical diversity threshold, a different equilibrium appears in which one large, integrated platform dominates while smaller platforms persist as extremist niches. In an intermediate regime, the two outcomes coexist, generating path dependence and hysteresis. We further demonstrate how modest, strategically targeted interventions—such as rewarding minority participation—can destabilize polarization and promote integrated discourse. The model shifts attention from belief change to participatory choice. It links micro-level learning dynamics to macro-level online fragmentation and informs mechanism-based interventions in the digital public sphere.

This paper develops a Calculus of Consent -inspired model that focuses on how strongly citizens believe there are moral truths in politics. This truth-commitment is treated as an environmental parameter that shifts external-cost and decision-cost schedules while maintaining the contractarian objective of minimizing their sum. Two results follow. First, the optimal threshold tightens when truth-commitment steepens external costs relative to decision costs and loosens in the reverse case; under a plausible configuration, higher truth-commitment implies stricter rules. Second, even at the optimal rule, the minimized sum of external and decision costs weakly increases whenever truth-commitment raises either component at a fixed rule. The analysis is agnostic about the existence of political moral truth. An interpretive section situates these results in Buchanan’s procedural liberalism under moral anti-realism and explains why popular belief in moral truth tends to elevate the costs of collective organization, providing a contractarian rationale for his skepticism. Extensions sketch how consensus and conviction operate as orthogonal channels, how rights can substitute for higher thresholds, how heterogeneous truth-commitments aggregate, and how perception shifts tied to truth-commitment can distort observed rules. The paper brings metaethical beliefs into the positive theory of constitutional choice, providing a tractable formal account of how truth-commitment shapes optimal rules and the costs of collective organization.

I study elections where some candidates have an advantage unrelated to their competence. Although this advantage is negligible in general elections, it is significant during candidate selection by parties. Further, the built-in advantages of some candidates may be a measure of the political system’s inefficiency. The selection of candidates by a party is a crucial institution for this inefficiency to exist. Theoretically, I show that the preciseness of the party’s estimation of candidates’ chances of winning a general election has a non-monotonic effect.

This paper seeks to clarify the concept of opportunity hoarding as it applies to Black-White educational inequalities. Two prevailing interpretations stand out: a group-disparity interpretation, which treats opportunity hoarding as any process generating group differences, and an exclusionary-behaviors interpretation, which emphasizes how White actors secure advantages through exclusionary practices. I argue that the former is too broad — remaining vague about the underlying mechanisms — and the latter too narrow, overlooking what I term hoarding without hoarders, i.e., opportunity hoarding that arises even in the absence of exclusionary behaviors. I define opportunity hoarding as the relational processes that generate racial penalties in access to resources, i.e., disparities unexplained by previously formed individual differences. Using an agent-based model of racial disparities in advanced course-taking, this paper shows how network diffusion — under segregation, consolidation of race and socioeconomic status, and temporal constraints — can produce racial penalties even when behaviors are race-neutral. The framework highlights the need for scholars and policymakers to look beyond exclusionary acts in the hoarding of valuable resources.

There are different theories that aim at explaining the emergence of norms (defined as statements about oughtness). It is not known which theory is superior. This paper is a first attempt to propose a new integrated norm theory, based on two plausible and widely accepted theories: James Coleman’s and Robert Ellickson’s theories about the origin of norms. After discussing methodological issues referring, among other things, to arguments for integrating the theories, the new theory is proposed. Among other things, it does not only explain norms as effects of externalities (as Coleman’s theory), but also as signals to express distinctiveness and group commitment (with the example of the Hells Angels motor club). Coleman’s theory is further modified by integrating from Ellickson’s theory a set of variables that intervene between the exogenous variable “close social relationships” and the origin of norms. The model includes transaction costs and cooperation as intervening factors. Furthermore, “overarching norms” (from Ellickson’s research) is added as a new condition for the origin of norms.

The fact that we all have names makes naming an ubiquitous institution. We develop a game-theoretic model to explain the existence of single names (anthroponyms) and how they may be exchanged as a way to promote cooperation. In social interactions, names provide partial identification information that can help reduce the likelihood of cheating, which would be higher with alternative information structures. We then propose a definition of honor based on the probability of being cheated, and derive general patterns for optimal naming that may maximize honor.

How individuals value their own and others’ outcomes is conceptualized as their Social Value Orientation (SVO). Research demonstrates that SVO is a valid predictor of cooperative behavior across various empirical settings. However, once individuals interact repeatedly, the relative strength and stability of the SVO–behavior link are less clear cut. We postulate that learning mechanisms have a bearing on cooperative behavior and potentially override the influence of SVO. In an experiment with a Step-Level Public Goods design with impact asymmetry ( N = 120), participants were randomly assigned to groups of five and interacted for six rounds. SVO was measured with the 9-item Triple-Dominance Measure. Using a multi-level Bayesian approach, we corroborate that SVO is predictive of behavior at the onset of interaction. Yet, after the first interaction, the relationship between SVO and behavior virtually disappears.