The Role and Structure of Social and Legal Institutions

Functions of Social Institutions

Social institutions fulfill critical roles within society, categorized into positive functions that promote stability and negative features that can hinder individual adaptation.

Positive Functions of Social Institutions

• Simplify Social Control: Institutions generalize ways of behaving and thinking, which are internalized during the socialization process.
• Provide Established Roles: They provide individuals with established forms of relationships and roles, to which members merely adapt.
• Agents of Coordination and Stability: They act as agents of coordination and stability for mass culture, satisfying various social needs.
• Behavior Regulators: They serve as behavior regulators, generating conformity and social expectation, and becoming important elements of social control.

Negative Features of Social Institutions

• Resistance to Change: This is derived precisely from the permanent character of their structures, which are often considered guardians of tradition.
• Frustration of Social Personality: The establishment of more or less rigid patterns of behavior means that some individuals cannot adapt and feel like misfits or incapable of conforming.
• Disintegration of Social Responsibility: While each individual has social responsibilities, the task of discharging these responsibilities is often transferred to different institutions (e.g., the family institution transfers certain responsibilities to the educational institution).

Legal Institutions

Legal institutions are mandatory and durable rules of conduct that regulate human activity in specific social conditions. Their collective purpose is the preservation and improvement of social order, safety, and citizen welfare. They possess the particularity of being enforceable, meaning compliance can be legally compelled. For this reason, they must be enacted by the proper authority—a characteristic that fundamentally distinguishes them from other social institutions.

It is significant to note that among the various legal institutions across different societies, a certain parallelism exists. They retain enough similarities to allow for universalization, suggesting a common origin and tradition, and producing similar effects. For example, since human nature is fundamentally the same everywhere, identical social phenomena occur, such as the appearance of fixity and permanence, which ultimately supports this parallelism.