The conference will focus on “Institutional Pathologies. What can we learn from severely malfunctioning economic and political organizations, institutions and networks? “. Keynote speakers are Heikki J. Koskinen (Helsinki), Hartmut Rosa (Jena), and Rasmus Johnson (Copenhagen, CBS).

The 4th Witten Conference on Institutional Change aims to identify promising interdisciplinary approaches (in economics, social philosophy, political science, social science, psychology, theoretical medicine, legal studies and other relevant disciplines) with a view to progress towards the synthesis and integration of empirical research, theory construction and modelling of institutional pathologies.

Key questions (non-exclusive) are:

• Does corruption support or hinder economic development? What other social miseries can be explained as symptoms of institutional pathologies (e.g. chronic warfare and violence, massive poverty, pervasive mistrust, high suicide rates, militant fundamentalism, terrorism)?
• Do self-enforcing institutions help to stabilize economic and political organizations? Is self-enforcement a proxy for “institutional health”?
• How do notions of institutional pathologies connect with discourses about legitimacy, efficient and effective goal-attainment, institutional rationality and irrationality?
• Can conceptualizations of disease, illness, malady be modified and re-construed in ways that make them heuristically applicable to diverse social institutions, organizations, and networks?
• Are there other models from disciplines such as economics, organizational theory, clinical psychology, or systemic therapy that are more suited to the task?