Institutions, Rationality, and Coordination

Understanding coordination is a key challenge for research on the cognitive foundations of institutions. The standard approach until now has been to focus on mind-reading skills and to allow for bounded rationality. This approach, however, has empirical and theoretical shortcomings. Experimental data suggest that models of bounded rationality fail to explain convergence on focal points. And from a normative viewpoint, coordinating agents seem to have good reasons to flout strategic reasoning. This has led researchers to explore models of “belief-less reasoning” – such as team reasoning and solution thinking. If the justification for rule-following and institutional compliance cannot be found in standard or bounded rationality, reasoning modes that do not involve sophisticated mind reading may have both descriptive and normative pull.