Salvaging Systems from General Systems Theory:

Systemic Ontology and Mechanism-Based Explanation

for the Social Sciences

Andreas Pickel

Trent University, Canada

Prepared for presentation at the ISA XVIth World Congress of Sociology THE QUALITY OF SOCIAL EXISTENCE IN A GLOBALISING WORLD

Durban, South Africa, July 23-29, 2006

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General system theory intended to be a super theory, uncovering universal principles applying to systems in general: 'its subject matter is the formulation and derivation of those principles which are valid for systems in general' (von Bertalanffy). [T]he general systems theorist is entitled to theorize about systems in general, regardless of the special laws they satisfy. Not so the specialist in the nervous system of the higher vertebrate: he deals with a unique system possessing properties that no other system in the world has, such as lateral inhibition, synaptic plasticity, spontaneous activity, and the possibility of knowing itself. (Bunge in Mahner, p. 278)

The title and introductory quotations offer a first clue as to how this paper fits into the

larger context of “systems thinking.” It is not interested in the agenda of general systems

theory as formulated by von Bertalanffy – in particular the formulation and derivation of

those principles which are valid for systems in general. Such principles, to the extent

they exist, should be helpful to scientists in any discipline or field. However, more than

general principles are needed for the social sciences to make a decisive break from the

Newtonian worldview to which so many approaches remain wedded. What is needed is a

general philosophy that is fully cognizant of the theory and practice of the natural

sciences while at the same time being appropriate to the specific subject matter and

concerns of the social sciences. Such a general philosophy should take explicit positions

on fundamental problems of ontology, epistemology, and methodology. General systems

theory does not have a developed general philosophy, though it is committed to reflecting

the theory and practice of the natural sciences. It is also not committed to identifying

how and to what extent social systems differ from natural and biosocial systems. Other

systems theorists, in particular Talcott Parsons and Niklas Luhmann, were devoted to

discovering principles and laws underlying social systems, but they provided no general

philosophy anchored in modern science. Their substantive theoretical projects play no

significant role in the social sciences today (Treviño 2001; Wagner 1997).

This is not to say that systems thinking is out. It is being rediscovered in the

social sciences, and it has been enthusiastically embraced in the biosocial sciences

(psychology, neuroscience, human biology) since about the mid-1990s. However,

concepts have disciplinary histories, and while the systems concept seems unproblematic

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for scholars in the biosocial sciences, it remains rather problematic for social scientists.

Thus while “dynamic systems theory” or “dynamic systems principles” play a major role

in psychology and neuroscience, these phrases are almost completely absent in the social

science literature. Systems thinking, to the small extent that it is practiced explicitly, can

be found under the headings of “chaos theory,” “complexity theory,” and

“sociocybernetics.”1 Its proponents make an attempt to leave behind systems thinking of

the “old” kind by embracing new concepts such as “non-linear dynamics” and

“spontaneous emergence” that first appeared in biology and mathematics (Capra 2005).

The present analysis is part of the effort at renewing systems thinking in the social

sciences by – as the title of the paper suggests – salvaging systems from general systems

theory. The salvaging operation follows two general objectives: first, to sketch the

outlines of a general systemic framework encompassing all the sciences; and second, to

argue that a systemic framework works best with a specific mode of explanation, that is,

“mechanisms-based” explanation. This will be the task of the first half of the paper. The

second half will illustrate this systemic and mechanismic approach in the context of three

research problematics in the social sciences – social boundaries, the economic role of

relgious ideas, and postcommunist transformation.

Like the concept of system, the concept of “mechanism” may be quickly

associated with particular approaches and theories which have little in common with the

approach presented here. Mechanistic explanation poses the lesser obstacle in this

respect since the main problem tends to be its confusion with mechanical explanation and

worldviews popular in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. However, as Mario

Bunge (2004, 203) points out, “[t]here are thermonuclear, thermomechanical,

electromagnetic, chemical, biological (in particular neurophysiological), ecological,

social, and many other mechanisms as well. This kind of explanation is usually called

mechanistic. I prefer to call it mechanismic, because most mechanisms are non-

mechanical.” Well-known instances of social mechanisms are inclusion and exclusion,

conflict and cooperation, participation and segregation, coercion and rebellion, imitation

and trade, migration and colonization, technological innovation, diffusion, and the

various modes of social control. Mechanismic explanation, as I will argue, is of such

central methodological significance since it differs from most standard modes of

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explanation employed in the social sciences: the neopositivists’ “covering law” model of

scientific explanation, the interpretive approach of the hermeneutic or Verstehen school,

as well as functional and teleological modes of explanation.

Systemism is a particular ontology that underlies the systemic analytical

framework proposed in this paper. The single most important point to be stressed is that

a systemic view of reality must not be confused with systems theories such as Parson’s

structural functionalism, Luhmann’s theory of autopoietic systems, or Wallerstein’s

world-systems theory.2 While phrases such as “political system,” “energy system,” or

“national systems of innovation” are widely used, albeit in a loose fashion, they do not

entail any methodological commitment to systems theories. In contemporary social

science, social wholes or social entities are variously and confusingly referred to as

structures, institutions, networks, regimes, fields, spaces, sites, configurations, situations,

et cetera. Mario Bunge’s systemism is employed here because it provides an

overarching, logically consistent and sufficiently open conception of social wholes3:

“Some concrete systems change swiftly, others slowly; some assemble themselves, others

are made; some are closed and self-regulated, most are neither; some have shapes

(geometric boundaries), others do not.”(Bunge 1996, 21) Systemism maintains that

social systems are material or concrete and should be distinguished from both conceptual

systems such as scientific theories and other semiotic systems such as ideologies--

fundamental distinctions that in much of social science remain unclear or are rejected

altogether. With these remarks in mind, it is now possible to introduce systemism and

mechanismic explanation in more detailed and specific terms.

Systemism

Systemism can be situated in a conceptual space demarcated on the one hand by systems

theories, and by general but loose usage of the concept of system, on the other. Systems

theories purport to explain how social systems work. Think, for example, of world

systems theory, which is not merely a description of the world in terms of systems but

rather aims to explain how fundamental social, economic, and political changes

everywhere are driven by a global historical dynamic, in a theory that assigns causal

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primacy to top-down processes from the world system to all lower systems. Similarly,

autopoietic systems theory is more than a set of descriptions of various social systems

with an emphasis on their communication systems. Rather it makes the theoretical claim

that the core dynamics of modern societies should be sought in the workings of discrete

communications systems that self-organize corresponding, more or less autonomous

societal subsystems such as politics, the mass media, education, arts, and law.

There is a myriad of examples for loose uses of the term system, and for most

purposes such loose usage will be sufficiently precise. The more important point is that

since the term “system” is so widely used and familiar, most of us seem to believe in the

existence of systems of one sort or another, or at least in the usefulness of the concept.

Analytical philosophers of course have a field day with such commonsense terms and

familiar concepts and, I imagine, could demonstrate that they are analytically useless or

meaningless. I derive a more encouraging conclusion from this state of affairs. The

“system metaphor” has general currency without requiring any knowledge of and

commitment or opposition to systems theory. I therefore suggest that we take the loose

usage area of the conceptual space as our point of departure while ignoring the systems

theory area for the purposes of the following exposition. In fact, systems theory is of no

particular further significance for the present study.

A long-standing philosophical debate in the social sciences is over the primacy of

individualism or holism. Rational-choice theorists, for instance, are strict methodological

individualists, whereas structural-functionalists are methodological holists. Their

disagreements stem in part from fundamentally different conceptions of social reality. Is

a society a whole transcending its members, or is a society simply an aggregate of

persons? The methodological implications of this basic ontological disagreement are the

source of unfruitful division and unfortunate confusion in the social sciences.4 Bunge’s

solution to this problem, implicitly practiced by many who intuitively sense the

inadequacies of both positions, is to reject yet affirm both. This dialectical solution is

called systemism. The twin concepts of system and mechanism are so central in modern science, whether natural,

social, or biosocial, that their use has spawned a whole ontology, which I have called systemism.

According to this view, every thing in the universe is, was, or will be a system or a component of

one. For instance, the electron that has just been knocked off an atom on the tip of my nose is

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about to be captured by a molecule in the air. Likewise, the prisoner who just escaped from the

county jail is about to be either recaptured or absorbed by a family or a gang. There are no

permanent strays or isolates. (Bunge 2004), 190)

What is a system? a system is a complex object whose parts or components are held together by bonds of some kind.

These bonds are logical in the case of a conceptual system, such as a theory; they are material in

the case of a concrete system, such as an atom, cell, immune system, family, or hospital. The

collection of all such relations among a system’s constituents is its structure (or organization, or

architecture) (Ibid., 188).

What are concrete or material systems? Depending on the system’s constituents and the bonds among them, a concrete or material system

may belong in either of the following levels: physical, chemical, biological, social, and

technological. The semiotic systems, such as texts and diagrams, are hybrid, for they are

composed of material signs or signals, some of which convey semantic meanings to their potential

users. (Ibid.)

Concrete social systems such as multinational corporations, universities or hospitals, not

to mention entire societies and civilizations, are exceedingly complex entities and differ

fundamentally from other concrete systems, whether physical, chemical or biological in

their properties and functions. In the most basic terms, systems can be modeled as

having components, structures, mechanisms and environments. In the systemic view,

concrete systems are real, but of course they can be conceived, described and explained

only in conceptual terms, that is, through models and theories. While people experience

(being part of) social systems directly5, they identify and understand social systems

through symbolic, in particular semiotic systems, such as shared social representations.

Such actors’ models are a central part of any human social system6 and play a central role

in the mechanisms that make the system work. In contrast to a concrete system, which is

in constant flux, a model of this system is a snapshot in time and space. Let us take a few

examples to illustrate the basic elements of a system model.

Bayer, a multinational corporation, is a social system composed of specialized

divisions manufacturing and selling a range of pharmaceutical and agrochemical products

and services on a global scale. The corporation’s structure or architecture is that of a

hierarchical bureaucratic organization, with a general holding company managing more

or less autonomous subgroups or divisions. In other words, this multinational corporation

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is composed of subsystems held together by a formal governance structure. The

corporation’s social environment consists of economic partners, competitors, and clients

(i.e. various “markets”); state agencies, international organizations, media and publics

(i.e. “politics”); national, regional, and industry-specific knowledge and skills clusters

(i.e. “cultures”). The corporation influences and is itself affected by a host of natural

environments. The central mechanism or process that “makes the corporation what it is,”

is the production and sale of its specialized goods and services. Of course this is a very

thin and superficial model of a multinational corporation, but it “touches on the major

bases.” That is to say, while composition, organization, mechanism, and environment of

this corporation are all considerably more complex, all four elements are basic to an

understanding of how this particular social system functions. Any model leaving out one

or more these elements is likely to lead to misinterpretations of what is actually going on

that may subsequently give rise to faulty social technologies (e.g. economic policies,

management fads, counterproductive labor-saving initiatives, or costly mergers).

Let us take another example from a world most academics will be personally

familiar with. The social system in question is a political science department in a small

university in the province of Ontario, Canada. The department is composed of several

faculty members holding a Ph.D. in political science, each having certain areas of

expertise within the discipline. The structure of the department is formally non-

hierarchical, with members taking turns serving as a department head (primus inter

pares) who has certain limited though not insignificant administrative responsibilities

related to teaching load assignment, promotion and hiring. As a subsystem of the larger

university by which faculty members are employed, the department’s environment is the

university as an organization, the students taking departmental courses, the larger

professional community of political scientists, as well as departmental ties with other

individuals and organizations inside and outside the university. The central mechanism

making the department what it is is the teaching of a range of political science courses

and providing a formal program of study for students who want to major in the discipline.

This once again basic model only barely touches upon what may be the central

bonds holding this particular social system together, and therefore what keeps the central

mechanism (teaching) going in this structure which, unlike business firms, is formally

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non-hierarchical. While all faculty members have the same rights and obligations,

fundamental differences in employment status do create a de facto hierarchy based on

degree of job security. At the top of the hierarchy are tenured professors, followed by

those in tenurable positions, with faculty on temporary contracts at the bottom. While job

uncertainty among the non-tenured provides some additional incentives for cooperation,

similar threats are not available to ensure cooperation among tenured faculty. As a result,

informal processes based on trust, goodwill, and norms of reciprocity and civility come to

play a central role in the stability of the structure. Anyone familiar with the potential

viciousness of intra-departmental conflicts in which trust and goodwill quickly disappear,

reciprocity turns into revenge, and civility takes the form of civil litigation, may question

the validity of my basic model. Something important must surely be missing in light of

the fact that most university departments are relatively stable and discharge their teaching

functions more or less adequately. I believe the basics of composition, structure,

mechanism and environment of the departmental model presented here are sound. One

crucial piece of information, however, needs to be added: the degree of cooperation

required in order to keep the system’s central mechanism going is in fact quite low since

faculty members have a great deal of autonomy in the design and delivery of their

courses. From a functional point of view, the bonds between members of the system can

be relatively weak without endangering the operation of its basic mechanism (teaching).

At the same time, however, scholarly and professional performance differences amongst

tenured faculty, such as in terms of publication records and popularity among students,

are at odds with the formal equality among members of this social system and a potential

source of resentment for high and low performers who each in their own way may not

feel properly recognized in their status.

In order to further deepen this analysis, it would be necessary to examine the

nature of the symbolic systems operating in this particular social system (e.g. values,

beliefs and professional standards held by members), the degree to which they facilitate a

working consensus on status criteria, and the practices through which the potential

explosiveness of status uncertainty or difference is diffused. (Lazega 2001) The basic

point here is to stress that symbolic systems (cultures, knowledge systems, ideologies, et

cetera) are a crucial part of the systemic approach without which neither a social system’s

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structure nor the working of its central mechanism(s) can be adequately modeled. In

cases where social systems like university departments become seriously dysfunctional,

they may have to be reformed by employing social technologies such as professional

conflict mediation, disciplinary action, or the rebuilding of trust, goodwill, and norms of

reciprocity and civility that in addition to legal norms and formal rules ensure the

functioning of a non-hierarchical social system of this sort. (Machado & Burns 1998)

The problems of most interest to many social scientists concern much larger,

more complex social systems, namely modern societies, regional entities such as the

European Union, and global systems. There are different ways in which the same social

system can be modeled. This does not imply that social systems are created by our

models. A multinational corporation such as Bayer can be modeled as an economic

system, a political-economic system, a cultural system, or a sociotechnical system with

emphasis on legal, managerial, or specialized knowledge aspects. (It is of course all of

the above.) The fact that different models of the same social entity can be, and usually

are, in circulation is in large part a result of the fact that social systems cannot be directly

observed. They are real, but partly hidden--and therefore also more easily concealed.

The systemic approach tells us only what to look for--composition, structure, mechanism,

and environment of a social thing--but little more. Is it therefore, as is usually claimed

for approaches like this, at best just another heuristic? The claim for systemism is more

far-reaching since it is presented here as a fundamental ontology of natural and social

things. It stakes out an alternative position in a long-standing philosophical debate in the

social sciences over the primacy of individualism or holism. Systemism is a general

solution to this fundamental problem in the social sciences, one that is implicitly

practiced by many who are dissatisfied with both positions. As any ontology, systemism

poses its own methodological challenges. While it postulates that social systems are

concrete entities, this does not somehow make them self-evident, easily observable

things, as the above two examples indicate. Rather, social systems have to be

conjectured and modeled. The central methodological implication of systemism,

however, is that while a major dimension of social reality is composed of actors’ models,

models and theories do not create or constitute social reality but rather are part of it. This

applies also to scientific models and theories, which differ from other actors’ models

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primarily with respect to the standards and social systems in and according to which they

are developed and criticized.

To conclude this section, the systemic analytical framework presented here is not

a direct challenge to macro-theories of politics, economics, and society; it remains a

framework or approach. However, it does pose an indirect challenge by confronting such

theories with an explicit ontology that claims to be applicable to all the sciences. As

such, it is particularly useful for critically examining any substantive theory by focusing

on its implicit ontological assumptions. In addition to this critical function, the systemic

analytical framework is also a fundamental tool in the development of theories and

explanations. In brief, it instructs us to look for concrete social systems and find out how

they work. Mechanisms-based (or mechanismic) explanation is the core of such a

methodology complementing systemism.

Mechanisms

Widely used phrases such as “political mechanisms” or “institutional mechanisms”

suggest that mechanisms are the same as policies and institutions or systems. For

instance, parliamentary and presidential systems can be seen as particular mechanisms for

representative democracy. This usage, however, is misleading since the concept of

mechanism and the concept of system are fundamentally different in the explanatory

approach presented here. Note that our definition presupposes a distinction between system and mechanism:

the latter is a process in a system. This distinction is familiar in natural science,

where one is not expected to mistake, say, the cardiovascular system for the

circulation of the blood or the brain with mental processes. But it is unusual in social

studies . . . [. . .] Mechanism is to system as motion is to body, combination (or

dissociation) to chemical compound, and thinking to brain. (Bunge 1997, 449)

The distinction between social systems and social mechanisms is fundamental, but at the

same time not always easy to make. Take the example of the concept of “market.” The

concept is used in the phrase “market system” and in the phrase “market mechanism.”

What then is a market? Is it a system, a mechanism, both or neither?

The concept of market generally does not refer to a concrete social system. The

statement “Russia has a market economy” refers to the Russian economy as a concrete

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social system, with the concept of market serving as a qualifier. That is, it suggests that

Russia’s economy is of a particular type, namely, the market type. Types or categories are

conceptual; they are applicable to many different concrete social systems. Thus we can

speak about the Ukrainian or Polish or Hungarian market economy. Well-known examples

of such usage are the market model employed in neoclassical economics and the capitalist

mode of production in political economy. Models of course may be more or less accurate

in representing concrete economic systems, and more or less useful for particular purposes

such as political propaganda, government regulation or economic reform initiatives. The

main point here is that the concrete social systems are the economies of these countries,

regardless of how fitting the concept of market economy may be for them.

When we speak about the “market for land in Russia,” are we in this instance

talking about a concrete social system? I think we are, but the concept of “market” is not

essential in referring to the concrete social system composed of “landed interests” such as

state farms, cooperatives, private farmers and other, non-agricultural users of land, as well

as related public and private regulatory bodies. The bonds making up the structure of this

system are economic interests, legal norms as well as informal understandings and

practices. The system’s central mechanism is the control and disposition of land. Its social

environment consists of other social systems, such as local authorities, “mafias,” banks,

residents and users of the land--all embedded in local and national “cultures” (i.e. symbolic

systems).7 Land is a natural resource and part of a larger natural environment and specific

ecosystems. This social system existed prior to and during communist times, though its

composition, structure, and social environment have since changed.8

The concept of market can also refer to a mechanism, that is, a kind of process.

This use of the concept would focus on the major processes going on in a concrete

economic system during a specified period, such as the market for land in Russia

mentioned above. The central question would be how the processes of control and

disposition of land operate in the system in question in which “market elements” have been

introduced. In this sense, however, “market” would refer to a class or type of mechanisms

(i.e. “market mechanisms”) that may or may not be present to various degrees in concrete

social systems.

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One can also speak of types of mechanisms at various levels of generalization,

say typical market mechanisms in a particular territory at a particular time. Examples from

the political economy literature are the “Soviet model” referring to centrally planned

economies of the Soviet type; the “Rhenish model” referring to specific ways in which the

post-World-War II West German system worked; or the “East-Asian model” referring to

U.S. sponsored, statist, export-led development processes in countries such as Japan, South

Korea, and Taiwan during the same period. The most general model of market

mechanisms is the neoclassical equilibrium model, in which the interplay of supply and

demand factors constitutes the central mechanism. The concrete systems themselves are

usually not empirically examined and theorized in this model. The neoclassical “systemic”

model is quasi-universal in claiming applicability not only to modern capitalist economic

systems, but to all social systems, past and present. It is in fact not a model of any concrete

social system but rather a model of a type of person, homo oeconomicus, whose individual

and collective actions are supposed to explain the broadest range of social phenomena. The

central mechanism in this psychological system, that is, the individual person, is a

somewhat mysterious rational utility-maximizing process going on in individual brains.

This illustrates a crucial difference between methodological individualism and the

mechanismic explanatory approach presented here in which social mechanisms in concrete

social systems make up the core of explanations of social phenomena. This method

encompasses both social structure (methodological holism) and individual agency

(methodological individualism) but goes beyond both of these basic methodological

approaches. [In the systemic view], agency is both constrained and motivated by structure, and

in turn the latter is maintained or altered by individual action. In other words, social

mechanisms reside neither in persons nor in their environment--they are part of the

processes that unfold in or among social systems. [. . . ] All mechanisms are system-

specific: there is no such thing as a universal or substrate-neutral mechanism.

(Bunge 1999, 57-59).

In neoclassical economics and neoliberal ideology, so-called market mechanisms are

represented as “universal or substrate-neutral” mechanisms. However, as I argued above,

market mechanisms are general types of mechanisms, that is, conceptual categories that

need to be distinguished from the actual mechanisms at work in concrete social systems.

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Contrary to the postulates of positivism and the practices of empiricists, most of

reality is unobservable. As a result, most mechanisms are concealed, so that they have to

be conjectured. As Bunge (2004, 206) points out, the builders of modern atomic physics

ironically paid lip service to this same phenomenalist and descriptivist dogma of

positivism while ignoring it in practice. Thus rather than being mere concepts that can be

applied to empirical reality, mechanisms are real processes that are for the most part

hidden. But since we have to use concepts regardless of whether we assume that reality

is systemic, constructed, or unknowable, what difference does a mechanismic method

make for scientific practice? Let us briefly look at two popular approaches to explanation

in the social sciences to illustrate this difference.

Theoretically oriented empirical social science frequently adopts the so-called

covering law model of explanation. That is, a particular generalization (“law”) is

considered valid if the empirical instances to which it applies are consistent with it. This

approach recommends the search for generalizations--the more widely applicable the

generalization the better. Thus, for instance, if it is possible to subsume all

postcommunist countries under the category of market economy, generalizations that

hold for all market economies can then be applied. The search for generalizations is not

necessarily inconsistent with the mechanismic approach--if by market economy we mean

a set of mechanisms at work in a particular social system. In fact, a generalization of this

sort may help us to understand how the social system in question actually works by

helping us to examine to what extent a particular set of mechanisms (e.g. “the market

economy”) is responsible for particular outcomes in a concrete social system. But a

commitment to generalization as such does not entail a commitment to look for actual

social mechanisms.9

The more common approach is to hypothesize causal relationships among a set of

variables that can be tested against particular empirical cases--say the relationship

between economic growth and degree of central bank independence, openness to trade,

financial liberalization, private ownership, et cetera. If the resulting correlations between

variables are taken as the central result of analysis, there is no incentive to examine how

causal processes actually work in the particular social systems under study. Moreover,

while variables may serve as stand-ins for mechanisms, actual explanation and deeper

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understanding require that those mechanisms be elucidated. Asking to what extent a set

of variables matter is a different question than how a social process works.

A second basic explanatory approach directs our primary interest to trying to

understand what social actors think--what I referred to as actors’ models earlier. There is

no question that the reconstruction of actors’ models can provide significant clues to how

a particular social mechanism works. This is especially true if such models are

investigated empirically rather than being postulated in basic assumptions about rational

utility maximization, rule following or Verstehen. In any event, actors’ models are not

themselves social mechanisms, though clearly collective beliefs can at times decisively

influence the course of a social process. It is therefore important not to mistake actors’

models by themselves for social mechanisms because the former have an effect only in

and through concrete social systems.

The first serious and explicit treatment of social mechanisms is credited to Robert

Merton.10 In his paradigmatic essay, “Manifest and Latent Functions”11, in which he

lays out his framework for functional analysis,12 he writes: Functional analysis in sociology as in other disciplines like physiology and

psychology, calls for a ‘concrete and detailed’ account of the mechanisms which

operate to perform a designated function. This refers, not to psychological

mechanisms, but to social mechanisms (e.g., role segmentation, insulation of

institutional demands, hierarchic ordering of values, social division of labor, ritual

and ceremonial enactments, etc.). (Merton 1967. 106).13

Merton conceived of mechanism-based explanation in the context of “theories of the

middle range” situated between abstract grand theories and atheoretical descriptive

accounts (cf. also (Boudon 1998) This type of theory cuts across the distinction between micro-sociological, as

evidenced in small-group research, and macro-sociological problems as evidenced

in comparative studies of social mobility and formal organization, and the

interdependence of social institutions. […] Total sociological systems of theory--

such as Marx’s historical materialism, Parsons’ theory of social systems and

Sorokin’s integral sociology--represent theoretical orientations rather than the

rigorous and tightknit system envisaged in the search for a ‘unified theory’ in

physics. […] As a result, many theories of the middle range are consonant with a

variety of systems of sociological thought. (Merton 1967, 68)

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Charles Tilly’s work provides rich illustrations of mechanismic explanation and

demonstrates, as we will see further below, that “theorizing at the middle range” does not

exclude the search for very general social mechanisms. He explains the difference

between mechanismic explanation, on the one hand, and individualist and structuralist

explanations, on the other, in the following terms. Analyses of inequality have suffered from reliance on various forms of

individualism (in which the attributes, propensities, and actions of one person at a

time aggregate into patterned inequalities among persons) and on various forms of

holism (in which society, the economy, capitalism, or some other such collective

entity serves itself by creating inequalities). No one will understand inequality-

generating processes well without taking relations among actors seriously as

starting points for analysis. The causal mechanisms this paper identifies are

neither individualistic nor holistic, but relational. (Tilly 1996, 7)

Tilly’s quotation is consistent with the approach presented here, though I have not used

the concept “relational” in my account. “Relational” is used much more frequently than

“mechanistic” in recent social science literature14, but I believe it proposes a similar

process-oriented perspective. (Compare with Bunge: “social mechanisms reside neither

in persons nor in their environment--they are part of the processes that unfold in or

among social systems” quoted above).

Following a mechanismic approach is challenging for the general reason that the

ontology of mechanisms as processes in social systems is unfamiliar--it is simply not a

well-established schema in the social sciences. It therefore requires a special conceptual

effort in order to be applied. There are three additional challenges. First, many social

mechanisms are well-known or even trivial, and therefore are not good examples of

original explanation. Take basic social mechanisms such as cooperation and conflict,

command and participation, or work and trade. Mechanisms of this general type occur in

numerous and diverse social systems, from the international system to firms and families.

Obviously, mechanismic explanation has to go beyond identifying general social

processes. Second, even in less complex social systems, more than one important social

mechanism will be at work. A multinational corporation, like any other firm, makes and

sells products or services, but a particularly important mechanism that distinguishes

MNCs from other firms is the integration of production sites and markets on a global

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scale. Thus the challenge for mechanismic explanation is to identify and model the key

mechanism(s) of a particular (type of) social system. Third, since social mechanisms in

most social systems occur not in unstructured clusters but in particular configurations, the

specific combination or concatenation of such mechanisms may be crucial. For example,

every capitalist economy will prominently feature private property rights, but there will

also be social rights and conventions that in their specific combination with formal

property rights shape how this economy functions. In what follows, each of these three

challenges will be addressed with examples from mechanismic accounts taken from

different areas of social science research.

Many general social mechanisms may appear as trivial in a particular explanatory

situation. Some, such as the ubiquitous social mechanisms of cooperation and conflict,

are indeed often trivial on their own since there are few social systems in which they are

not at work. But forms of cooperation and conflict differ greatly; think of constructive

conflict (Hirschman 1994) as in political or scholarly debates, as opposed to armed

conflict as in wars and insurgencies. So for most purposes these mechanisms need to be

further specified to help explain how they contribute to the working of concrete social

systems. We know, for instance, that debating can be a mechanism of peaceful conflict,

but that political debates and scholarly debates differ significantly with respect to the role

played by other mechanisms. Thus debates in political systems are in large part driven by

power considerations, such as gaining or maintaining particular positions or offices. By

contrast, debates in academic systems are in part driven by the scholars’ search for

recognition from their peers. Thus trivial general mechanisms can be concretized into

non-trivial, more specific mechanisms--such as from conflict in general to particular

forms of peaceful conflict. And general mechanisms combine with other, more or less

specific, mechanisms such as the search for power or recognition. Depending on the

explanatory or practical problem at hand, further concretization and combination of the

general mechanism may be required.

An important point to note here is that identical mechanisms can be involved in

producing diametrically opposed effects in the same type of system. That is to say, the

same mechanisms can have very different functions or effects. For instance, while the

power mechanism can combine with forms of peaceful conflict (e.g. an electoral

16

campaign leading to a smooth transfer of power), the same general power mechanism

also easily combines with forms of violent conflict (e.g. a revolutionary uprising or a

coup d’etat). The first in the following set of three examples illustrates that, while

mechanism-based explanation tends to be “middle-range theorizing” (see above), very

general social mechanisms as well can be fruitfully modeled. The second example will

show how grand theses such as Weber’s “Protestant ethic and the spirit of capitalism” can

be reexamined and tested by disaggregating them into distinct (middle-range) social

mechanisms. The third example will demonstrate how the success and failure of

postcommunist property transformation can be explained through a combination of

macro, meso, and micro level social mechanisms.

Tilly on Social Boundary Mechanisms

In the systemic ontology presented earlier in this chapter, a social system was defined as a concrete, material system whose parts or components are held together by social

bonds of some kind. The collection of all such relations among a system’s

constituents is its structure. Some social systems change swiftly, others slowly;

some assemble themselves, others are made; some are closed and self-regulated,

most are neither; some have shapes (geometric boundaries), others do not. (Bunge

1996, 270).

This definition does not explicitly address the question of a social system’s boundaries.

All social systems have boundaries of some sort, though unlike other material systems in

social systems boundaries are in part symbolic. Like all material systems, social systems

are in constant flux. However, any model of a social system will represent the system as

fixed in time and space. It was this static character of their systems models that has

earned structural-functionalists fundamental criticism. The danger, though not the

necessary implication, of such static systems models is that they ignore important change

processes in the real systems they model, especially if they focus on the functions and

effects of processes in relatively stable social systems. Many social processes do indeed

reproduce the state of a social system, but other processes alter it. Neither kind of

process can be identified and explained unless the systems in which these processes occur

are modeled. It is important to note that in many social science explanations, models of

social systems remain implicit. Perhaps the most widely used implicit systems model is

17

that of the “nation-state,” sometimes also simply referred to as “society” or even

“country” (Pickel 2006, ch. 6-7). Much has been made in the globalization debate of the

weakening and decline of territorial states, the standard type of political formation in the

world today. As a result, it is argued, the conventional model of the nation-state has

become increasingly problematic since many of the implicit assumptions contained in the

model, such as those relating to a state’s sovereignty, no longer hold true. It follows that

our largely implicit models of social systems like the nation-state may need to be

fundamentally revised.

Tilly is interested in discovering the most important general mechanisms

underlying boundary change. He defines a social boundary as “any contiguous zone of

contrasting density, rapid transition, or separation between internally connected clusters

of populations and/or activity” (Tilly 2004, 214). In the conception presented here, the

rather cumbersome phrase “internally connected clusters of populations and/or activity”

would simply be referred to as social systems. Tilly’s analysis is significant for our

purposes as an example of mechanismic explanation at a very high level of generality.

Since his discussion in principle applies to boundary changes in all kinds of social

systems, no particular social system model is needed. It is therefore possible for him to

focus exclusively on mechanisms of boundary change. This is rarely the case in

mechanism-based explanation since most social mechanisms are specific to particular

(types of) social systems which have to be modeled. Tilly distinguishes between three

kinds of processes: mechanisms that cause boundary change, mechanisms that constitute

boundary change, and effects of boundary change (see Figure 1.1).

[Figure 1.1 about here]

The reader interested in a more detailed explanation of these mechanisms as well as

examples of their working in concrete cases is referred to Tilly’s article (2004) and his

other work (see e.g. (1998; 2001; 2002). I will mention here only two of his

observations applying to mechanism-based explanation in general. The first is that

different mechanisms can have the same effect: boundary changes may be caused by any

Figure 1.1: General Causal Relations in Social Boundary Mechanisms

Mechanisms Causing Boundary Change• encounter• imposition• borrowing• conversation• incentive shift

Mechanisms Constituting Boundary Change• inscription-erasure• activation-deactivation• site transfer• relocation

Effects of Boundary Change• e.g network-based escalation of conflict through attack defense sequences

Adapted from Tilly 2004.

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one of the following mechanisms: encounter, imposition, borrowing, conversation, or

incentive shift. However, in many instances of boundary change these mechanisms may

well occur jointly. From a variable-oriented perspective, this abundance of causal

mechanisms in boundary change would be viewed as “overdetermined” explanation. That

is, if any one variable can bear the explanatory load, there is no point in adding further

causes. Instead, the task would be to establish the relative significance of each causal

variable in particular cases or classes of boundary change. A more sophisticated variable

based approach might try to discover the most frequent configurations of variables in

boundary change (Ragin 2000). By contrast, a mechanismic approach is primarily

interested in explaining how boundary changes arise and how they happen. Here only

real mechanisms count, not variables. Of course mechanisms can be treated as variables,

such that boundary change would be the dependent variable, and encounter, imposition,

borrowing, conversation, and incentive shift would be the independent variables. But not

all variables represent mechanisms--take variables such as complexity, size, or frequency.

In fact, it is probably fair to say that explanatory factors or variables are usually not

mechanisms, and if they happen to represent mechanisms they rarely do so in an explicit

and systematic fashion.

General mechanisms such as imposition or borrowing do not provide final or

bottom-line explanations for social phenomena such as boundary change. Once we move

below the level of social systems in general to the areas where most social science

research takes place, such general mechanisms need to be further broken down. This is

Tilly’s second observation: “(s)tepping up the level of magnification, we can always find

more microscopic mechanisms within encounter, imposition, borrowing, conversation,

and incentive shift. Looking closely at conversation, for instance, we will discover

improvisation, turn-taking, meaningful hesitation, code switching, and much more” (Tilly

2004, 221). One of the goals of a mechanismic research agenda is to discover and/or

inventory typical mechanisms recurring in specific types and configurations of social

systems. In fact, the literature is full of theoretical and empirical material that could be

reconceptualized as social mechanisms. Of course, this exercise should go beyond a

renaming effort that otherwise adds no new insights. In our second example, we turn to

precisely such an effort.

19

Cohen on Weber’s Protestant Ethic

Few students have failed to be impressed by Max Weber’s famous thesis presented in his

Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (1958) in which he argues that

Protestantism was an essential precondition for the emergence of modern capitalism.

That a religious doctrine could have such a powerful and decisive influence on economic

development, and how in general ideas can shape and condition material reality so

profoundly, surely poses one of social science’s most exciting and deep intellectual

challenges. While on the margins of social theory, radical idealism or radical materialism

survive in one form or another, there is a far-reaching consensus among social scientists

that religion and culture do affect economic life. In a large body of literature Weber’s

thesis has been dissected, endorsed or rejected. Jere Cohen’s Protestantism and

Capitalism: The Mechanisms of Influence (2002), argues that some parts of Weber’s

thesis are correct, but others incorrect. The central question therefore cannot simply be

whether Protestantism influenced capitalism (let alone whether ideas influence material

reality). Instead, we should ask when, how, and how much Protestantism has affected

capitalism. The key to dividing Weber’s thesis is found in the question of how Protestantism makes

its impact. If affects capitalism in several different ways. Each of these Protestant-

capitalism links is a separate mechanism of influence, and may be assessed separately

(Cohen 2002, 2).

Weber’s thesis covers a vast terrain, from the work ethic, saving and investment, and the

spirit of capitalism, to the rationalization of life, wealth and profit, the legitimation of

capitalism, religious anxiety, and the quest for salvation. Cohen translates Weber’s thesis

into a set of nine hypotheses, each containing several subhypotheses extracted from

Weber’s work. In total, he presents nine sets of distinct social mechanisms. As an

example, take hypothesis V on wealth and profit (ibid., 19):

HYPOTHESIS V. WEALTH AND PROFIT

Hypothesis Va: Protestantism approved wealth

Hypothesis Vb: Protestantism saw wealth as God’s blessing.

Hypothesis Vc: Protestantism approved of the acquisition of wealth.

Hypothesis Vd: Protestantism required the acquisition of wealth as a duty.

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Chapter 4 of Cohen’s book examines the evidence on wealth and concludes that “(t)he

Puritans were mixed about wealth and gain. Although moderate gains could be desired,

an immoderate desire for gain was sinful. Teachings were not consistent: wealth was

both devalued and made a duty. Overall, the dangers of wealth were stressed more than

this duty. The negatives of wealth limited and ultimately outweighed its positives” (ibid.,

247). In general, Cohen found fewer mechanisms at work than Weber had identified in

his study. Those mechanisms that could be confirmed were not as strong as Weber had

suggested and had less of an impact on society. (T)he Puritan contributions were not unique. [. . .] Puritanism’s effects were weakened by

inconsistencies. [. . .] Puritanism was not the cause of the economic uniqueness of the

Occident. It came too late to originate capitalism’s most distinctive institutions. Nor did it

foster economic rationality, which was not a Puritan norm and was not backed by religious

premia. If anything, its traditional business ethics restricted economic rationality.

Puritanism called for no unique economic actions. Its work ethic was not unique nor were

the religious premia based on it. It did not enforce economic actions by making them

proofs of election; they were minor proofs at best. Rather, it used moral force to secure

compliance with economic duties, and that mode of enforcement was far from unique

among the world’s religions (ibid., 259).

Cohen’s analysis clearly refutes Weber’s thesis in its strong form according to which

Protestantism was one, or even the, essential precondition for the emergence of

capitalism. At the same time, many of the mechanisms Weber specified did contribute to

the emergence of capitalism in the West. By rendering Protestantism a more consistent

and unambiguous doctrine than it was, he overestimated the direct influence of religious

doctrines on the economic behavior of the faithful. There are at least two general

mechanisms by which a specific set of ideas or doctrines affects social reality. First, a

doctrine or ideology motivates and guides the behavior and actions of its adherents

directly and explicitly. Second, a doctrine or ideology becomes incorporated in other

larger cultures in modified form and thus indirectly affects the thinking and actions of

those belonging to those cultures. Cohen reinterprets Weber’s thesis precisely in this

way. Through the first, direct form of the mechanism, Protestantism played much less of

a role in the emergence of capitalism than Weber proposed. Protestantism’s more

powerful and lasting influence on capitalism came through the second, indirect

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mechanism: by contributing to general culture after capitalism’s take-off reinforcing

certain behaviors also among non-Protestants and legitimating institutional characteristics

of capitalism such as inequality and exploitation.

A contemporary example illustrating these two basic mechanisms of how ideas

influence individual and collective behavior is the ideology of neoliberalism. There are

the faithful, especially in world financial institutions, business and government, who

advocate or play a role in implementing specific neoliberal economic policies (trade and

financial liberalization, fiscal stabilization, privatization, downsizing). The equally if not

more important influence of neoliberal ideology occurs via the second basic mechanism.

Starting in the late 1970s, previously marginal economic doctrines and their proponents

(e.g. (Friedman 1962; von Hayek 1944) were taken increasingly seriously by

governments especially in Anglo-Saxon countries as the Keynesian consensus dissolved.

Over the next two decades, neoliberalism’s general premises about the proper roles of

state and market and ideas about individual responsibility have penetrated cultures all

over the world (Fourcade-Gourinchas & Babb 2002)--not only government and business

cultures but national cultures and commonsense understandings--often with powerful

effects. Neither postcommunist transformations nor the restructuring of welfare states in

the 1980s and 1990s could have occurred in the absence of the ideological hegemony

neoliberalism established during that period. (Stiglitz 2002) 15

Verdery on Postcommunist Transformation

Our final example of mechanismic explanation comes from an anthropological study of

postcommunist transformation in rural Romania. The strength of anthropological and

ethnographic approaches is their focus on the microlevel of analysis, the real lives of

people in particular communities or locales. In a globalizing world, strength can turn into

analytical limitation to the extent that micro communities are directly or indirectly tied

into global networks and processes. In our systemic conception, a village in Romania in

the 1990s is a social system closely related and influenced by other social systems, from

neighboring villages, counties, agricultural service organizations and banks, the central

state, expatriate communities, the EU, IMF, World Bank, and others. In her excellent

study, The Vanishing Hectare: Property and Value in Postsocialist Transsylvania (2003),

22

Katherine Verdery identifies the major mechanisms through which the local system and

its actors change in the course of the transformation period after 1989, in part through

their internal interactions, in part through interaction with social systems outside and

beyond the village.

Privatization, along with other market reforms, has been a primary mechanism of

economic transformation in former postcommunist countries. Since the bulk of

productive assets were state-owned or in the hands of collectives, creating a market

economy with a significant portion of private property was one of the major policy goals

of reformers. We know that a variety of different policy approaches to privatization were

used, from restitution to the distribution of shares. But how exactly does such an

apparently clear-cut legal-technical conversion process actually work in real social

systems, and with what effects beyond those measured by standard economic indicators

such as growth, productivity, et cetera.? As Verdery critically remarks, “private property

becomes a catch-all concept that may explain everything in its generality but obfuscates

the details of how privatization produced revaluation.” We need to know the most

significant economic, political and cultural mechanisms of change that lie beneath the

surface of ownership change. These details [i.e. mechanisms] enable us to link the demands of the IMF and other world

financial institutions for fiscal austerity in government, which redirected capital elsewhere, with

the fact that local farmers did not have the cash to make their acquisition profitable. Through such

details we see how responsibility for the failure of the transition to capitalism was assigned to

individuals; yet the context in which they acted denied them the potentialities of a successful

transformation, and the actors responsible for those conditions evaded accountability for their

actions. This is the experience of the transition to market economies for huge numbers of people

in postsocialist East-Central Europe and Russia (Verdery 2003, 361).

Following the format established earlier in the paper for Tilly’s mechanismic account of

social boundary changes, I have distilled from Verdery’s analysis three sets of social

mechanisms--mechanisms causing property transformation, mechanisms constituting

property transformation, and effects of property transformation (figure 1.2).

[Figure 1.2 about here]

Figure 1.2: Mechanisms of Postcommunist Property Transformation

Mechanisms Causing Property Transformation• collapse of Communist regime, tabula rasa• regime collapse in 1989/91• symbolic and ideological significance of private property • neoliberal hegemony globally• popular high expectations of capitalism in socialist countries

Mechanisms Constituting Property Transformation• privatization• IFI specific policy preferences and advice• weak central state control• early restitution of land, late privatization of state farms• ineffective interest represenation by weak Agricultural Ministry• government-driven pricing policy disadvantaging agriculture• IMF macroeconomic stabilization plan leading to extremely high interest

rates• devaluing smallholders’ land by distributing land but not equipment

Effects of Property Transformation• successful commercial agriculture in market setting• demodernization: cultivators forced back into behavior resembling tradition• deracination: social uprooting of villagers• state retrenchment• delegitimation of new political regime and private property regime• devaluation of assets (land, machinery, personhood)• social polarization

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The italicized mechanisms under each of the three headings refer to the standard

mechanisms identified or presupposed in neoliberal accounts of privatization. The major

mechanism causing property transformation in this view is the collapse of Communist

regimes as a form of political and economic order, leaving a “clean slate” for the design

and establishment of a market system based on private property.16 The major mechanism

for property transformation is privatization, that is, the transfer of state and collective

property into private property. In the neoliberal view, this property transformation

mechanism is flanked by other market creating mechanisms, in particular internal and

external liberalization and state retrenchment. The effect of property transformation in

land is the establishment of successful commercial agriculture in a market setting. In a

rough and general sense, this is arguably what has happened in most postcommunist

countries. However, this account contains some serious oversights and errors,

oversimplifying some mechanisms while completely ignoring others.

First, while the collapse of Communist regimes no doubt was one of the most

important mechanisms causing property transformation, the case of China demonstrates

that there are other mechanisms that can bring about fundamental changes in ownership.

While political regimes collapsed in a spectacular fashion in 1989/91, this did not leave a

tabula rasa for redesigning a new political economy. The societies upon which a new

economic system was to be grafted remained in place. Second, the major if not sole

mechanism constituting property transformation in the neoliberal view is privatization.

This, however, is a special type of mechanism, namely a “designed” mechanism, usually

referred to as policy or social technology. Privatization is a legal change in ownership

title, mandated and organized by laws. How such privatization policies are actually

implemented, utilizing what social resources, against what political and cultural obstacles

and with what social effects, is not part of this conception. Analyzing property

transformation as a social process, the approach followed by Verdery, on the other hand,

refers only in part to policy or “designed” mechanisms. It is for the most part interested

in the actual social mechanisms that bring about, make up, and result from the intended

and unintended consequences of social action (Merton). Figure 1.2 illustrates that the

actual mechanisms of prime importance in the property transformation process were of a

24

structural, political or cultural kind that do not figure in the neoliberal conception. Let us

look briefly at a few examples.

Among the mechanisms causing property transformation, regime collapse was

only one of the central mechanisms. An equally important mechanism was the symbolic

and ideological meaning of private property both within communist countries and

internationally at that time. Domestically, the nationalization and collectivization of

productive assets had been one of Communist regime’s central policy, and had formed

part of the claim to the superiority of Soviet-type economies over capitalist economies.

The wealth disparity between East and West had become so glaring by the 1980s that

citizens of communist countries not surprisingly had immense expectations of what

capitalism might bring for them. Globally, neoliberal ideas had become hegemonic

among international institutions, Western governments and increasingly among their

publics. Instructive here is the case of China where market reforms were well underway

in the late 1980s, so that economic growth was clearly associated with the reform policies

of a communist regime. In addition, the Chinese state was, and needed to be, much less

open to outside policy advice than the new regimes in Moscow, Warsaw, or Bucharest

who sought the approval and support of Western countries and the international agencies

dominated by them.

Turning to the mechanisms constituting property transformation, the central

neoliberal “mechanism” of privatization is, as mentioned above, an ideological concept

rather than a social mechanism. The set of social mechanisms identified as crucial in

Verdery’s analysis of ownership transformation in “her” village in Transsylvania

demonstrate how a complex social process of this sort actually works. The policy

preferences and advice of IMF, World Bank, and Western governments played a major

role in how postcommunist transformation processes were defined and approached--a

mechanism that is familiar from many other contexts. The collapse of the old regime

weakened central state control over the decollectivization process, giving room for often

ineffective or even criminal practices in local level privatization agencies. The

Agricultural Ministry remained a weak advocate for the specific needs of the

transforming farming sector. Different timing in the privatization of collective farms and

state farms gave state farms and their managers significant economic advantages.

25

Government pricing policy kept agricultural prices artificially low, while an IMF

sponsored macroeconomic stabilization program led to extremely high interest rates that

combined made it impossible for most small farmers to invest and survive. The land of

smallholders was further devalued by the state’s policy of distributing land but not the

equipment necessary to work it.

After more than a decade of rural transformation studied by Verdery, the result

was indeed, as intended by neoliberal reform policies, the emergence of commercial

agricultural enterprises succeeding state and collective farms and taking over the many

small farms created in the early process of property restitution. Romanian agriculture,

moreover, has become increasingly integrated into the world market--one reason why the

existence of many of the new private farming operations remains precarious. However,

the broader effects of property transformation that are either ignored, assumed to be

benign or just inevitable in the neoliberal view, readily become apparent against the

background of a mechanismic analysis of the property transformation process. Many

new private farmers were forced into what appeared to be traditional farming methods

when ownership reforms made it difficult to combine land, labor, machinery, and

marketing in a modern fashion. The transformations led to the social uprooting of

villagers, while the state increasingly abdicated responsibility for the social welfare of its

citizens. The new political regime in general, and the private property system in

particular, consequently lost much of its initial legitimacy. Property transformation

effected a general devaluation of assets--land, machinery, and social identities. It led to

growing polarization of rural society. [A] condition of commercial farmer’s success was the gradual impoverishment of villagers, a

process to which he himself, along with numerous other groups, organizations, and policies, had

contributed. That is scarcely news for social science. In this context, however, the process has

taken a course specific to postsocialist Romania, with its slow decomposition of socialist property

forms (Verdery 2003, 353).

Thus a general mechanism at work in the commercialization of agriculture in different

types of farming systems in modern history is the impoverishment of small-scale and

subsistence farmers--from the English “enclosures” to postcommunist decollectivization.

However, this general mechanism needs to be further broken down in order to explain the

different ways in which the process actually works in different social systems. In the

26

case of postcommunist property transformation, land reform was part of radical and

comprehensive political and economic restructuring in which the complete privatization

of farm land and the marketization of a centrally planned and ‘closed’ economy were

primary goals. Another common feature of postcommunist property transformation was

that socialist property forms had a peculiar relationship with each other that compared to

property forms under capitalism could be described as “fuzzy boundaries.” Clearly, a

structural peculiarity of this kind, giving rise to its own set of mechanisms, would pose

particular challenges for a radical change in property regime. At the very least, it is

something reformers might want to take into account. The shared structural problem

situation of postcommunist countries, however, is accompanied by many crucial

differences. In the case of land reform, for instance, the restitution of land to its former

owners followed in many countries seems to have generated problems such as extreme

fragmentation that a different privatization approach, such as that followed by Hungary,

might have avoided. But other structural differences between reforming countries, such

as prospects for or stage of EU integration, have powerful effects on the fate of the

agricultural sectors of individual states, constituting their own sets of mechanisms while

affecting the working of others. Here we come back to the question of how general

specific (types of) mechanisms are, and what (types of) systems work in the same or

similar fashion.

Recapitulation and extension

Let us review some general points made about systems and mechanisms. The systemic

framework presented here distinguishes between material, semiotic, and conceptual

systems. The natural world is composed of concrete systems--from molecular to social.

Semiotic systems are systems of symbols used by groups of people or communities (i.e.

by members of social systems). Conceptual systems are systems of ideas “by

themselves,” such as scientific theories, religious doctrines, or ideologies. All conceptual

systems ultimately belong to semiotic systems, that is, symbolic systems used by

particular communities. However, it is possible to treat conceptual systems as separate

from their communities, that is, in conceptual analysis. Modern science depends upon

this methodological convention in order to develop, test, confirm or refute theories.

27

There are two kinds of misunderstanding one should avoid. First, the methodological

convention does not turn conceptual systems into real or concrete systems that have a life

of their own (pace Popper’s World 3 and other idealist or Platonic philosophies). No

community, no conceptual system. Second, the fact that conceptual systems are

ultimately semiotic systems, that is, their creation, modification, use and rejection are

always also social acts, does not mean that semiotic systems such as modern science

could be adequately studied as if they were nothing but social conventions (as radical

constructivists in the philosophy of science have done). The implication for social

science is that since it studies social systems that contain semiotic systems, it is often

necessary to study the role of ideas in how a social system works. The role of ideas may

be small or large in any given instance, but it is never exclusive (ideas don’t act).

[Figure 1.3 about here]

Social and semiotic systems each have a particular kind of mechanisms (see

figure 1.3). A conceptual system, by contrast, does not have its own mechanism, though

its construction and modification are subject to standards and conventions.17 Conceptual

systems cannot “work” without the mental activities of real people. In this sense,

conceptual systems are “driven” by semiotic communities (e.g. composers of classical

music or theorists of society). A semiotic system is driven by communication among the

members of a community (a social system) through, with or about symbolic or conceptual

systems. A social system is driven by social mechanisms. Conceptualization and

communication are among the mechanisms of social systems, but not all social

mechanisms have a significant conceptual or symbolic component (e.g. a basic social

mechanism such as the unintended consequences of purposive action identified by

Merton).

How do we study each kind of system? How do we explain how it works? The

common method for all three kinds is to model the system in question and to identify its

major mechanisms. In the case of a conceptual system, say a religious doctrine, we

would model its basic system of ideas and examine its “internal logic”--internal

consistency, relationship to other bodies of knowledge, et cetera. In the case of a

Figure 1.3: Explaining with systems and mechanisms

ONTOLOGY SYSTEMS MECHANISMS

conceptual kinds of systems [none]

semiotic symbolic systems communication

material concrete systems social mechanisms

28

semiotic system, say a religious community, we would model it as a communication

system (composition, structure, environment) and try to identify its central mechanisms

in its communication processes. The underlying conceptual system, that is, the religious

doctrine, would become a central part of this model of a semiotic system. In the case of a

social system, say an urban community, we could model it as a system composed of

various religious subcommunities. (Of course an urban system is composed of more than

religious subsystems, especially political and economic subsystems.) Semiotic systems,

and by implication conceptual systems, may or may not be significant in how a social

system works. For instance, in order to explain the de-population of a city in a period of

war, the residents’ attempt to survive by moving to a safer environment with better food

sources would be a central mechanism not in need of being supplemented by

explanations based on symbolic systems. Of course, by definition, all the city’s residents

belong to semiotic communities. And the modeling itself that has been proposed here has

itself conceptual, semiotic, and social dimensions which in turn could be modeled.

What sorts of explanation can we expect from this approach? What does it mean

to say that mechanismic explanation is neither too general or abstract nor too thick or

descriptive?

[Figure 1.4 about here]

Figure 1.4 illustrates four types of mechanismic explanation in each of which

generalization plays a different role. Type 1 represents the most specific kind of

mechanismic explanation. However, it differs from so-called thick description insofar as

it models concrete systems and mechanisms rather than just describing events and

situations in less systematic terms. Many good historical explanations are of this kind.

They are interested in explaining specific events but will attempt to do so by identifying

and laying out the “logic” of the most important systems and mechanisms. In other

words, the primary goal in this type of explanation is not to derive lessons or

generalizations from the case under study, but rather to apply a general method and

utilize available theoretical knowledge for the purpose of explaining a series of historical

Figure 1.4: Kinds of Explanation

1. concrete system + concrete mechanism

2. type of system + concrete mechanism

3. concrete system + type of mechanism

4. type of system + type of mechanism

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events. Type 1 explanations thus are historical-empirical explanations with no

independent theoretical interest.

Type 2 is interested in explaining by identifying concrete mechanisms that occur

in a particular type of system. For instance, in comparative politics the most important

type of system is the nation-state/society/country; and the goal of analysis is to discover

how nation-states in general or a group of states with common systemic characteristics18

work by identifying specific processes at work. Thus while all nation-states in the

twenty-first century are subject to the forces of globalization, the concrete mechanisms

that determine their interaction may be specific to a group of states or each individual

state. A type 3 explanation reverses the roles played by systems and mechanisms: it is

interested in explaining by identifying concrete systems in which a general type of

mechanisms occurs. For instance, in political economy the general mechanism of

competitive setting of tax rates (“beggar thy neighbor”) as a way to attract investment

occurs to varying extents in different jurisdictions (i.e. political systems). By analyzing

a concrete political system (say the province of Ontario in Canada), it is possible to

explain whether, how and to what extent this general mechanism works as a result of that

system’s particular characteristics (the system’s institutional characteristics, historical

relationships between major political and economic actors, cultural dimensions, and

political and economic environment). Type 2 and 3 are thus historical-empirical

explanations with a particular theoretical interest. The interest may lie in examining the

working of a type of system or a type of mechanism. The studies of Cohen and Verdery

discussed above are of this type.

Type 4 represents the most general kind of mechanismic explanation. The main

goal here is to elucidate the working of general types of systems and mechanisms.

Concrete historical cases or empirical instances are used for illustration or for testing the

validity of generalizations about types of systems and mechanisms. Type 4 thus are

theoretical explanations with no specific historical-empirical interest. Tilly’s analysis of

boundary mechanisms discussed above is of this type.

30

Concluding comment

This paper has set out to salvage systems from general systems theory. The salvaging

operation was considered necessary because systems theory, which is committed to a

particular research agenda, has in the social sciences become identitified with systems

thinking in general. In contrast to the biosocial sciences which have no problematic

history of systems theorizing and therefore enthusiastically embrace frameworks such as

dynamic systems theory, the social sciences shy away from explicit systemic approaches.

This paper proposed a particular conception of systemic thinking, namely systemism, that

is based on a general philosophy with explicit positions on basic ontological,

epistemological and methodological questions. Although materialist, it considers mental

states and symbolic systems as real – emergent properties of material systems such as

human brains and social groups that epistemologically are distinct and irreducible levels

of reality. Methodologically, the paper argued for the need to match a systemic

framework with mechanisms-based explanations and illustrated the resulting approach

with three specific examples from the social sciences.

Endnotes 1 A search of Cambridge Scientific Abstracts (accessed June 29/06) for the period 1990-2006 yielded the following: keywords Psyc Econ Sociol PoliSci “dynamic systems theory” or “dynamics systems principles” 148 3 2 0 “complexity theory” 201 41 72 26 “chaos theory” 492 71 136 23 “sociocybernetics” 0 1 41 1 Psyc = PsycINFO; Econ = EconLit; Sociol = Sociological Abstracts; PoliSci = Worldwide Political Science Abstracts 2 On systems theories in general and specific versions, see Müller 1996. For examples of

critiques of Parsons’ systems theory: (Elias 1994, intro) (Habermas 1984); Luhmann’s

31

systems theory: (Bluhdorn 2000), (Osterberg 2000); Wallerstein’s world systems theory:

(Aronowitz 1981; Kaplan 1980). 3 In fact, Bunge’s ontology is not confined to social systems. See especially (Bunge

1977) Treatise on Basic Philosophy, Vol. 4: A World of Systems (1979). 4 A number of recent works in different social science disciplines have attempted to

bridge the methodological individualism-holism divide. The literatures going by the

common name of “new institutionalism” represent recent attempts of this sort in political

science (e.g. (Ostrom 1993), comparative politics (e.g. (Lichbach & Zuckerman 1997),

sociology (e.g. (Brinton & Nee 1998), economics (e.g. (Rutherford 1994) Rutherford

1996), management theory (e.g. (Ingram & Silverman 2002), organizational theory (e.g.

(DiMaggio & Powell 1991) and policy studies (e.g. (Scharpf 1997). The difficulty and

ultimate failure to date of integrating rational choice and culturalist theories is discussed

by (Johnson 2002). 5 That our subjective experience of living in/being a member of social systems is “direct”

does not imply that our experiences, even such basic and immediate experiences as

emotions, are not semiotically encoded. See e.g. Wierzbicka (1999) Emotions across

Languages and Cultures. Diversity and Universals. 6 On the question of whether they are in other animal social systems, see Wierzbicka

(2004). Models are of course also central in social systems of modern science. Indeed, a

fundamental problem in the social sciences is how to model the actors’ models that are

part of the social phenomena to be explained. 7 Of course there are also local, regional, and global land systems. 8 An excellent ethnographic and sociological study of major mechanisms of

transformation in land systems in postcommunist Romania is Verdery (2003), which will

be discussed at greater length later in this chapter. 9 On the role of laws in mechanismic explanation, see Bunge 2004. 10 According to Hedström & Swedberg (1998, 6), Arthur Stinchcombe (1991) reopened

the debate in the journal Philosophy of the Social Sciences. Ten authors are assembled in

Social Mechanisms. An Analytical Approach to Social Theory (1998), including

Raymond Boudon, Jan Elster, and Arthur Stinchcombe, as well as the volume editors

32

Peter Hedström and Richard Swedberg. Bunge’s article “Social Mechanisms” was

published in 1997 (Bunge 1997), also in Philosophy of the Social Sciences. In the same

journal, two special issues (June and September 2004) were devoted to discussing

Bunge’s approach to systems and mechanisms (Pickel 2004). 11 In his Theory and Social Structure (1948/1968), republished as Ch. III of On

Theoretical Sociology (1967). 12 “Functionalism,” like Bunge’s systemic approach, may have negative connotations for

some readers. For clarification, see Bunge & Mahner (2001). 13 Merton (ibid.) continues: “Basic query: What is the presently available inventory of

social mechanisms corresponding, say, to the large inventory of psychological

mechanisms? What methodological problems are entailed in discerning the operation of

social mechanisms?” As Mayntz 2004, 256) has diagnosed in a recent symposium on

systems and mechanisms: “With the exception of game theory, the literature is still

devoid of attempts to treat diverse kinds of actor constellations in different fields of

macro-social research as systematically as has been done for the emergent effects of

collective behavior. [. . .]The problem is that in most empirical studies in which structural

configurations and actor constellations play a crucial role, very little effort is devoted to

distil mechanism models from the analysis.” 14 A general search (Aug. 23, 2005) of the Social Sciences Citation Index for the period

1995-2005 shows that “mechanistic” occurs in the title or abstract of about 500 articles,

while “relational” in about 2,500 articles. Bunge’s own “mechanismic” appears twice. A

“relational” perspective has a long tradition as part of Marxian dialectics (cf. Heilbroner

1980, ch. 2). 15 Pickel (2006, ch. 4) examines the different mechanisms and functions of economic

ideologies by looking at the various roles neoliberalism has played in postcommunist

transformation processes. 16 For a discussion of postcommunist transformation from a systemic and mechanismic

viewpoint, see ch. 4 and 5 in Pickel (2006). 17 This leads some theorists to argue that conceptual systems themselves can be social

mechanisms (e.g. Wight 2004).

33

18 Much literature in comparative politics is actually focused on one country only. Here

the comparative, generalizing element may be implicit, or the type of explanation offered

is actually of type 1 as just discussed.

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