NOTES ON THE PHILOSOPHICAL DIMENSION OF INSTITUTIONALIST DEBATES AND A DEFENSE OF THE INSTITUTIONAL PLASTICITY

Abstract

The text is about the philosophical background of Social Sciences’ institutionalist debates. It purposes two philosophical types of institutionalism. First, the one which focuses on general ideas like necessity, stability and spontaneous and remoted origin of institutionality. I call it immanentialist institutionalism. Second, the one which focuses on general conceptions like contingency, instability and deliberative and political origin of institutionality, which I call transcendentalist institutionalism. Both are maps with articulated ideas which were purposed as they could classify the roots of institutionality by different and even contrary angles. Furthermore, the text recognizes that, between the two, immanentialist institutionalism is the more academically discussed and explored field of ideas. But it concludes by advocating the recovery of transcendentalist approaching, not only to offer a possible balance for the debates in each area, as well as some guidance to compositions of alternative political agendas. In the end, from a broad perspective, it tries to inspire reflections about how to remake the relations between societies and their institutions in order to change them, and in a deep sense, however without being dependent on revolutions or crisis.