This is a book on advice, its importance for decision making, and its influence on the evolution of conventions of behavior. The idea is simple. As societies progress, old generations of social agents die and are replaced by new ones. We are interested in what happens in this transition as the old guard instructs the new arrivals about the wisdom of their ways. Do new entrants listen to and follow the advice of their elders or dismiss it? Is intergenerational advice welfare-improving or can it be destructive? Many times wise advice is rejected only to have new generations repeat the mistakes of their parents instead of learning from them. The advice offered from one generation to the next allows for a type of social learning that leads to the creation of conventions of behavior.

This chapter presents the results of an original survey of more than 350 local elites sampled from across Senegal’s precolonial geography to develop insights into how local actors experience and evaluate their local governments. Throughout their answers to open-ended questions, respondents invoke the past when describing local sociopolitical cleavages. Cumulatively, their responses illustrate how cross-village social institutions motivate local political action under decentralization in historically centralized areas. Where cross-village social institutions are absent, local politics are more frequently described as contentious and conflictual. I use this survey data to elaborate the foundations of my theory and to deduce the theory’s two mechanisms: the role of group identities and social network ties. Both mechanisms are present and mutually reinforcing in areas that were home to precolonial kingdoms, while they are fragmented across space in historically acephalous zones. The findings show that otherwise similar local governments are home to distinct political climates as a function of their long-run political histories.

Chapter 1 articulates the theory of institutional congruence. I argue that persistent forms of social cooperation at the grassroots are revitalized following institutional reform because some communities have inherited robust social institutions that stipulate appropriate social behavior. I elaborate on the theory’s dual mechanisms of shared social identification and dense cross-village network ties to illustrate how institutional congruence helps local elites navigate the two-level political game introduced by decentralization: local elected officials face pressure within their villages on a first level that are not always compatible with their incentives at the second level of the local state itself, where they must negotiate with other elites from other villages. When shared social institutions stretch across the many villages of a local government, elites find it easier to negotiate at the second level of the local state because these social institutions reorient them toward group-based goals. As a consequence, local representation and redistribution is expected to be broader across space under conditions of high congruence, but contentious and targeted when it is low.

Chapter 6 examines Rousseau's claim that human societies are artificial and that recognizing this is crucial to understanding how theories of social pathology can ascribe non-arbitrary standards of healthy functioning to institutions. The most important sense in which society is made by us is expressed in the claim that institutions are grounded in conventions. The upshot of this claim is that a kind of self-consciousness is intrinsic to social life, namely, collective acceptance of the authority of the rules governing social institutions, which, in the most fundamental institutions, includes a shared conception of the good that explains their "point," part of which consists in promoting the freedom of social members. Because acting in accordance with such a conception is constitutive of activity in institutional life, the functions of institutions – including a conception of their healthy functioning – are accessible, if imperfectly, to the agents on whose activity those functions depend.

Chapter 9 explains Durkheim's understanding of moral facts and the conception of social solidarity at the core of his account of the division of labor's function in organized societies: crucial to what holds societies together and enables them to live are moral facts that inform relations among social members. Durkheim views human society as normatively constituted – governed by rules accepted as authoritative by social members – and claims that social institutions serve moral and not merely "useful" social functions. The chapter articulates the resources Durkheim has for conceiving of social pathology (itself an ethical phenomenon), examines the modern pathology most important to him, anomie, and coins a term for a related social pathology, hypernomie, a condition in which social rules are excessively rigid or constraining. Finally, the chapter reconstructs Durkheim's understanding of what is bad about social pathology – why social members should care whether their society is ill.

Chapter 11 reconstructs Hegel's conception of objective spirit, which specifies the kind of being, or reality, characteristic of the social world and distinguishes it from other domains of reality, such as nature and subjective spirit (or mind). It begins by examining what objective spirit means for Vincent Descombes and, to a lesser extent, for Durkheim and John Searle. Four claims associated with Hegel's account of objective spirit are distinguished and defended: 1) there is a form of mindedness that exists outside the consciousness of individual social members; 2) externally existing mind, embodied in social institutions, is metaphysically prior to the minds of the individuals who live within those institutions; 3) social reality depends on a collective acceptance of its institutions' normative rules; and 4) such rules constrain what social members do but also expand their practical possibilities and hence enrich their agency

Chapter 1 articulates the theory of institutional congruence. I argue that persistent forms of social cooperation at the grassroots are revitalized following institutional reform because some communities have inherited robust social institutions that stipulate appropriate social behavior. I elaborate on the theory’s dual mechanisms of shared social identification and dense cross-village network ties to illustrate how institutional congruence helps local elites navigate the two-level political game introduced by decentralization: local elected officials face pressure within their villages on a first level that are not always compatible with their incentives at the second level of the local state itself, where they must negotiate with other elites from other villages. When shared social institutions stretch across the many villages of a local government, elites find it easier to negotiate at the second level of the local state because these social institutions reorient them toward group-based goals. As a consequence, local representation and redistribution is expected to be broader across space under conditions of high congruence, but contentious and targeted when it is low.

This chapter presents the results of an original survey of more than 350 local elites sampled from across Senegal’s precolonial geography to develop insights into how local actors experience and evaluate their local governments. Throughout their answers to open-ended questions, respondents invoke the past when describing local sociopolitical cleavages. Cumulatively, their responses illustrate how cross-village social institutions motivate local political action under decentralization in historically centralized areas. Where cross-village social institutions are absent, local politics are more frequently described as contentious and conflictual. I use this survey data to elaborate the foundations of my theory and to deduce the theory’s two mechanisms: the role of group identities and social network ties. Both mechanisms are present and mutually reinforcing in areas that were home to precolonial kingdoms, while they are fragmented across space in historically acephalous zones. The findings show that otherwise similar local governments are home to distinct political climates as a function of their long-run political histories.

Finally, Chapter 6 draws on the book’s analysis to make conclusions and recommendations designed to improve the effectiveness of domestic human rights implementation. These recommendations regarding social institutions are directed primarily towards states parties to international human rights treaties, as well as to the UN treaty bodies. It urges a shift in the international discourse on culture and human rights, a more creative approach to implementation measures, and greater scope for non-state actors. The chapter situates this analysis in the present context of globalisation, the rise of privatisation and the changing role of the state. It also looks ahead to projections of increasing religiosity and to Islam becoming the world’s largest religion. The chapter explores the broader application of the book’s main contention and its thematic connection to other scholarship on human rights narratives and challenges to state-centricity.

The introductory chapter frames the book in the contemporary setting of persistent human rights violations, increasing human rights contestation and shifting global dynamics. The chapter articulates the challenge of human rights implementation, highlighting the gap between international norms and local realities. It identifies several problematic factors in the effective domestic implementation of international human rights law. First, the chapter addresses the long-standing cultural critique of universal human rights, and their continued cultural disconnect in many societies today. It then addresses the state-centric and legalistic nature of human rights as problematic factors in implementation. This first chapter advocates an increased role for other (non-legal) measures and other (non-state) actors in the domestic implementation of human rights in order to overcome the problems identified. Specifically, a greater role for social institutions is advocated. Finally, the first chapter sets out the book’s research design, case study and structure.