This is a set of posts to cover some thinking about the nature of institutions in both a political and governmental sense. I’m going to reference some academic work, but not a lot, and I’m going to ask more questions than I have sensible suggested answers for. I also intend to write several parts to this series.

In 2021, it feels like there is no denying the attention beast of the political internet. We’ve had elections where the primary deciding issues and communications strategies were meme based.

We have, certainly in the UK, a full scale retreat from some of the principles and handshake agreements that constitute civil society and the institutions of the country. I’d like to explore how to hate institutions, love them, mount their passing and protest their existence. I’d like to do this to try and make the point that this hand of cards is not the only one, that

Institutions have a significant amount written about them. You could (perhaps too sweepingly) argue that the majority of history has been written about the histories of institutions (church, state, army) until more ground-up methods came to the fore. Theorists such as Mary Douglas and Michel Foucault have written about the way that institutions act and exercise power (although, both write about it in a way that's hard to quote directly so I won't). We will explore some of that, but it would help to begin with a description of what an institution is and how it functions and some of the ways that those two things don’t mix.

I’m going to use Parliament as my go-to example, both as I have experience in working there, a significant number of my research participants work or have worked there and there is ethnographic literature studying the nature of the institution.

I’d argue that Parliament is constituted in a few categories (there are definitely others, this is how I’m slicing it here).

Law

Parliament exists because laws say that it does. It uses particular powers that laws say it does. This reading is strictly true and far too limited. Some powers available to Parliament are not used (imprisoning people in the tower) by restraint and social agreement.

Practices and logistics

An order paper is printed, the chamber is cleaned, the AV techies work, the Hansard reporters type. The practice of parliament is

Building

Pretty one. It creates symbolism in a way that a leather bound volume of Lords Hansard could only dream of.

The law can be changed (and has been iteratively over hundreds of years),t

The practices are changed regularly. Annunciators (a system of bells across Parliament used to summon members to a vote and to give them information on what’s currently being debated) are TV screens on a closed circuit, replacing a system of ringing bells (like a phone, still found in older parts of the palace) and servants literally shouting in a chain like a human megaphone in an Occupy protest. Times move on. Servants are fired, typing pools are fired, printers are fired.

And while Westminster Hall is almost 1000 years old, the chambers are pretty recent. The Parliament building of Canada is older. If you’re being picky as well, the Commons chamber was rebuilt after bomb damage in the war.

My point with all of this detail is that these things are not ancient, but are designed to look ancient and to convey a sense of unbroken tradition.

So, we need to actively about how institutions exist. They’re a mixture of artefacts and imagination. They aren’t just the building, just the people in the building today or yesterday, or the peripherally interested. They’re a combination. I think this becomes important because of the way, if you’re working on democracy/digital/reform/transformation/whatever that the thing you’re trying to reform can feel like a huge monolith. It isn’t. And a lot of it is in your head. And other peoples’ heads.