Shared and Institutional Agency Toward a Planning Theory of Human Practical Organization

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. Drawing on earlier work on the roles of planning agency in our human, cross-temporal and small-scale social organization, it focuses on the role of planning agency within our organized institutions, whether a religious congregation, a small business, a professional association, a city council, a university, a non-profit organization, a corporation, a political party, a legal system, or a democratic state.

Shared and Institutional Agency draws on ideas, inspired by H.L.A. Hart, that our organized institutions are rule-guided, and that to understand this, we need a theory of social rules. This book develops a planning theory of social rules and puts forth an organized institution as involving authority-according social rules of procedure. This supports a model of organized institutions that makes room for pluralistic divergence and leads to a model of institutional intention and institutional intentional agency. 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.

Michael E. Bratman is U.G. and Abbie Birch Durfee Professor in the School of Humanities and Sciences, and Professor of Philosophy at Stanford University. His book publications include Intention, Plans, and Practical Reason, Faces of Intention: Selected Essays on Intention and Agency, Structures of
Agency: Essays, Shared Agency: A Planning Theory of Acting Together, and Planning, Time, and Self-Governance: Essays in Practical Rationality.

Preface
Overview: Intention, Plans, and Practical Organization

PART ONE: INDIVIDUAL AGENCY, SHARED AGENCY, SOCIAL RULES

1. The Planning Theory Of Individual And Shared Intentional Agency
2. On The Way To Organized Institutions: Social Rules
3. A Shared Policy Model Of Social Rules, Part 1
4. A Shared Policy Model Of Social Rules, Part 2

PART TWO: RULE-GUIDED INFRASTRUCTURE OF ORGANIZED INSTITUTIONS

5. On The Way To Organized Institutions: Social Rules Of Procedure
6. A Procedural Social Rule Model Of Organized Institutions

PART THREE: INSTITUTIONAL INTENT
7. Institutional Intention
8. A Davidsonian Challenge
9. Institutional Intention Without A Dense, Holistic Subject
10. Institutional Intentional Agents

PART FOUR: TOWARD A BROADER PHILOSOPHY OF HUMAN AGENCY
11. Re-Thinking The Davidsonian Synthesis
12. Conclusion: Our Core Capacity For Planning Agency