Emerging Institutions: Pyramids or Anthills?

In the present text, an institution is understood to be an ( observable) pattern of collective action, justified by a corresponding norm. By this definition, an institution emerges slowly, although it may be helped or hindered by various specific acts. From this perspective, an institutional entrepreneur is an oxymoron, at least in principle. In practice, however, there are and always have been people trying to create institutions. This article describes the emergence of the London School of Economics and Political Science as an institution and analyzes its founders and its supporters during crises as institutional entrepreneurs. A tentative theory of the phenomenon of institutional entrepreneurship is then constructed by combining elements of sociology of translation, actor-network theory and garbage can model. The article concludes with a suggestion that the way institutional enterprises are narrated may differ from the way they are built, and a genre analysis can be of further help in understanding this phenomenon.