Ideas and Institutions. From Switchmen to Engine Drivers

My paper aims to develop a model of motivation in institutional contexts, based on ideas and collective intentionality. It starts from the observation that institutions have the capacity to induce a specific, collective logic of action. Individuals in institutional contexts act as if their contribution would make a difference – although, in fact, it does not. This puzzle is described by Jon Elster like this: “What if everyone left their beer bottles on the beach, stayed home on voting day, or fiddled with their tax returns? […] If people did not find the question, But what if everyone did that? a persuasive one, society would be in constant threat of disintegration. The puzzle is why the question is so persuasive.” This puzzle is addressed in the literature either from an economic (based on utility) or a sociological (based on social norms) perspective. I argue that both fail on tests of empiricism and plausibility. Drawing on motivational psychology and social philosophy, I develop an alternative approach to explain why individuals under certain conditions conform to a collective or institutional logic beyond norms and individual utility. The two basic components of my model are ideas and collective intentionality (as conceived by John Searle). The combination of these two components causes fundamental shifts in the motivational structure of individual agents. So far, ideas have been treated mostly as decisional factors or filters between motivation (desires) and action, in the sense of Weber’s “switchman”. I argue instead that ideas not only guide action, but that, in conjunction with collective intentionality, they motivate action and therefore become actual engine drivers. Ideas produce a shift from perception to imagination. This means that an actor’s cognitive map becomes detached from perceptions and therefore from physical or social limitations. This is exactly what ideas do to actors: They open up a virtually unlimited cognitive space and thereby enable action on a much larger scale. The second component, collective intentionality, refers to a shift in the self-awareness of actors. They come to see themselves not as individuals (with corresponding limitations) but as organically integrated collectivity. In their minds (or probably on a more basic level of consciousness) actors acquire the “Gestalt” of a group. In the words of Michel Callon and Bruno Latour, they become, as a whole, the Leviathan. In such a state or disposition, cost-benefit calculations and perceptions of self-efficacy are fundamentally altered and the question “What if everyone did that” starts to make sense. Institutions are based on this mechanism that allows to align individual motivation with collective goals. The theoretical argument is substantiated by empirical examples of collective action and institutional development from three different contexts: The German Green Party, the Brazilian Worker’s Party and the American Tea Party movement.