Democracy in Transition*

Walter J. Shepard

American Political Science Review, 1935, vol. 29, issue 1, 1-20

Abstract: Any civilization may be reduced to two factors, a system of institutions and a system of ideas. By institutions we merely mean collective behavior patterns, the ways in which a community carries on the innumerable activities of social life. The church, the market, the family, the learned society, the trade union, the university, are examples of institutions. We often attribute a personality to such behavior patterns, clothe them with the attributes of a personal will, mind, and purpose; but such attribution is sheer fiction, the product of a purely imaginative process. Institutions are merely behavior patterns—they are nothing else. Government is an institution or a set of institutions. Society achieves certain results through collective political action. The means that it uses are the behavior patterns which we call courts, legislative bodies, commissions, electorates, administration. We idealize these institutions collectively and personify them in the State. But this idealization is pure fancy. The State as a juristic or ideal person is the veriest fiction. It is real only as a collective name for governmental institutions.

Date: 1935
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