Permanent Tensions Research Articles

Organisations, institutions, système : types et niveaux de règles

The notion of rules is common to the economics of organization and the economics of institutions. These two fields may find a better relation thanks to clearer conceptual distinctions on one hand, and to a more hierarchised systemic approach on the other hand. This may clarify somewhat debates among institutionalist approaches. The paper first discusses the totalizing theory of working rules of Commons, the distinction between the rules of the spontaneous order and those of the organised order in Hayek, and North's view of institutions as rules of the game for organizations. A critical comparison of these three theories raises different questions : the importance of distinguishing organizational and institutional rules, and of taking into account informal and formal rules and their relations at both levels, the teleological character of the organization, the hierarchy of rules at different levels of society. The paper proposes a synthetic and critical approach in trying to articulate individual and collective actions in a systemic framework where organizations are defined as collective and hierarchised ensembles of specific rules, and institutions as general and social rules with higher durability, directly or indirectly sanctioned by the State. The cohesion of various configurations of rules is contingent, subject to permanent tensions, it evolves. It is an essential source of organizational and institutional change in a given system, and it is the origin of crises.

The Particular Logic of Modernity

A friend once said to me that he would be glad to discuss postmodemity if only he knew what modernity meant. There are so many descriptions. We're all modern: Modern society, modern art, modern philosophy, modern science, modern technologies. The reformation, the wars of religion, the American revolution, the French revolution, the Paris Commune, the world wars. Civil society, capitalism, the liberal state, the procedural state. Luther, Galileo, Descartes, Locke, Kant, Manet, Cézanne, Rawls, Warhol. But also Novalis, Nietzsche, Heidegger and the German cultural conservatives. Derrida, Bataille, Levinas, Pynchon. And so forth.Here is Robert Pippin's enumeration of what he sees as the common features of modern societies:The new conception of nature required by modern science; the post-Cartesian notion of mind as subjective consciousness; a political world of passion-driven but rationally calculating individuals, or a “post-Protestant” world of individually self-reliant, responsible agents; a new political language of rights and equality; and, most of all, a common hope: that a secular, rational basis for moral and political order could be found and safely relied on, could inspire the allegiance and commitment necessary for the vitality and reproduction of a society. (I2)Hegel had his own theory of modern life and thought, centering around the culmination of spirit's teleology in objective and absolute spirit, based on the logical patterns of the movement of spirit's development. Modern times brought decisive liberations and completions, but also permanent tensions, and a loss of immediate rootedness in a natural or social home. Modern selves are strong enough to be bei sich in the midst of modern tensions and negativities, but it takes work and maturity to deal with the inner complexities of modern thought and the built-in tensions of modern institutions.

Multiculturalisme et marginalisation à Los Angeles. De Watts (1965) à South Central (1992)

Multiculturalism and marginalization in Los Angeles. From Watts (1965) to South Central (1992), Cynthia Ghorra-Godin. From the 1992 South Central events, the author looks on the major upheavals that have marked Los Angeles in the last two decades: the shifts in population composition since the spectacular arrival of the Hispanics, the socio-economic and inter-ethnic tensions stemming from de-industralization, the limits of political regulation. The sudden riots of 1992, just as the permanent tensions underlying urban life, reflect mainly the failure of a town planning which focused on spatial expansion and individual housing to the detriment of the development of a genuinely public space able to blend the various communities.