I discuss Aoki's fundamental model of institutions in its most recent version, building on a comment that Aoki … contributed to a paper by Hindriks and Guala in 2015. These authors advance a ‘rules in equilibrium' approach to institutions that … claims to reduce a Searlian social ontology of institutions to mere linguistic conventions and theoretical terms. Against …

political institutions in competition among groups. A Darwinian theory of institutions is unfolded in eight propositions which … are discussed in some detail. Core concepts include competition among rules and institutions, hierarchical selection …, warfare), and in many cases economic institutions emerge as unintended effects of the evolution of the state. Enpirically, a …