Shared and Institutional Agency

Our human lives involve remarkable forms of practical organization--diachronic organization of individual activity; small-scale organization of shared action; and the organization of institutions. In this book, Michael Bratman argues that the key to these multiple, inter-related forms of human practical organization is our capacity for planning agency. Shared and Institutional Agency develops a planning theory of social rules and puts forth an organized institution as involving authority-according social rules of procedure. The view that emerges sees our capacity for planning agency as a core capacity that underlies not only string quartets and informal social rules, but also the rule-guided structure of organized institutions and institutional agency.