Chapter 9 - Procedural institutionalization beyond the Western democracies: three bases of voluntaristic restraint

Summary

Is the integrity of corporate directorates' collegial form upheld by law in any nation-state (Note 1982, Useem 1984)? Is the integrity of the collegial form of corporate research divisions upheld by law in any nation-state (Braithwaite 1982), or that of research facilities within public or private universities (Parsons and Platt 1973)? Do professional associations uphold by law the integrity of collegial formations at their members' various work sites, whether within universities, corporations, hospitals, or other complex organizations (Abbott 1988)? Do artistic, intellectual, or scholarly networks uphold by law the integrity of the collegial form framing their members' exchanges of information, including their anonymous refereeing and independent reviewing of publications and prizes (Crane 1972)?

The integrity of collegial formations is not currently upheld by law in any modern nation-state. As a result, not a single modern nation-state protects and expands heterogeneous actors' and competing groups' prospects for social integration as a matter of public policy. Yet, collegial formations are to be found, both historically and today, within different sectors, industries, and organizations of different civil societies. By no means are all of these sectors located within civil societies of Western democracies exclusively. Yet, in every instance to date, actors who have adopted the collegial form of organization have done so on their own, independently of the support of legal or formal sanctions. One result of this ad hoc activity, of course, is that collegial formations are distributed quite unevenly across the civil societies in which they are found at all.