Jack Knight

Jack Knight

In his book, Institutions and Social Conflict, Jack Knight recognizes three basic kinds of evolutionary theories of institutional change. First, classical statements of cultural evolution which explain social institutions as some form of natural selection. Second, there are theories of social convention, which explain institutional emergence and change as the product of unintended consequences of decisions by individual actors. Third, there are theories which employ methods from both of the previous theories, usually market-based accounts describing emergence as a process of exchange and competition.