Assignment 2: Ideas and Politics in Social Science Research

‘Institutions engage in the authoritative allocation of values,’ -David Easton(1953)

The meaning of this quote is that institutions are formed on ideological frameworks that are solidify by the collective acceptance of the prevailing principles that those institutions espoused.

I chose this quote because it directly explains the reason gender and racial inequalities were able to endure.

When one reads the very definition of what an institution represents, it states that it is ‘the stable and valued repeating patterns of behavior’. Therefore, it’s ideals become the formula by which policy-relevant ideas are filtered into the policy-making process and then becomes the laws by which society operates. This creational policy-making process because it is conducted by individuals with personal biases and conflicting views, one will find that it is not free of fundamental flaws.

Racism and sexism were able to survive because they were permissible under the rules of institution that created them. It is no secret that Institutional frameworks create constraints just as well as opportunities for individuals who hold such beliefs. Sadly, if wrong, it can become the model by which impressionable societies also operate. An example of this can be seen in the widespread acceptance of superiority theories on race and gender.

For any policy to find legitimacy, it has to be generated from a point of shared beliefs along with public debate by those whose lives such a policy would affect. Finally, since ideas are fundamental to the creation of institutions, then they should be subjected to substantive revision and change where they are proven to be incoherent in their interpretation or downright oppressive to a subsection(s) of the population. This would represent a sort of evolution as institutions make the necessary adjustments  in order to conform to the changing paradigm.

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