Institutional Control

"What you know you can't explain, but you feel it. You've felt it your entire life, that there's something wrong with the world. You don't know what it is, but it's there. Like a splinter in your mind, driving you mad."
--Morpheus (The Matrix)

This video makes you think about the extent to which current events are random vs planned. I am reminded of institution theory (e.g., DiMaggio & Powell, 1983), which posits that actors are prone to bend to external pressures emanating from their 'institutional fields.' Rather than a single conspiratorial-type plan being executed, the impetus may be collective rationality acting to produce isomorphism--i.e., like responses among many, seemingly independent individuals.

It appears planned; in reality, it is merely people acting alike in response to external pressures.

Consider the case of the Tea Party inductees into Congress as a result of the 2010 election. Most if not all of them intended to behave in a manner consistent with Tea Party values of limited government, free markets, and fiscal responsibility. However, some have since taken up behavior consistent with the Big Government types that they campaigned against. Plausibly, pressures exerted by the institutional field of the federal government drove some Tea Partiers to modify their behavior, perhaps even unknowingly or under some self-justification. These people became 'typical politicians' once positioned in an institutional field that exudes politics.

An institutional perspective provides one explanation of why individual freedom remains rare in the course of human history despite the fact that liberty is a self-evident inalienable right. Axiomatic urges to get something for nothing encourage isomorphic behavior that crowds out liberty and voluntary cooperation in favor of coercion and control of others.

It is not a conspiracy against freedom. It is people employing a similar strategy to satisfy their needs. That strategy is to enslave others.

Reference

DiMaggio, P. & Powell, W. 1983. The iron cage revisited: Institutional isomorphism and collective rationality in institutional fields. American Sociological Review, 48: 147-160.