Is It Possible to Change Systems?

Abstract

Intended social change does not necessarily succeed because of unintended consequences. In this paper, we analyse the mechanism which makes intended social change fail. According to our model, intended social change fails when intervention of change agent changes social mechanism, which is a kind of mapping from means to end of the intended social change and expresses the actual relationship between them. This change of social mechanism in not intended by change agent, so we think it as a kind of unintended consequences. Then why and how does the intervention of change agent change the social mechanism? Whether the social mechanism changes or not depends on reactions of members in social system to the intervention of change agent. And these reactions empirically tend to be conservative against the intervention. So in case of intended change of institution, members will tend to refuse the change. Then social mechanism will change and this intended change will fail.