confronted with ‘‘big rocks in the landscape,’’ such as governments, legislatures,
parties: They cannot deny the importance of these bodies nor can they reduce these
‘‘rocks,’’ despite valiant eVorts made by some, to sets of homogeneous arrange-
ments. Sociologists are somewhere between these two extremes, depending on
whether they focus on a huge number of relatively small bodies or on a relatively
small number of large ones. The diVerences in the character of institutions are
directly connected to diVerences in the nature of the institutionalization process,
thus further complicating the picture and making it even more diYcult, if not
wholly unrealistic, to look for an overall picture. What diYculties and diVerences
suggest is that the dearth of studies on the nature of institutions, except until very
recently, is not just a puzzle needing a solution, but a serious gap in our
understanding of social life, as studies of institutions and institutionalization are
likely to provide major clues about key variations in approach among the social
sciences.
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