This paper intends (1) to emphasize the importance of the notion “unintended consequences of social action” and (2) to criticize the notion so as to make it useful for sociological analyses. Firstly, we showed that many sociologists and social scientists had pointed out the phenomena which could be explained in terms of the notion. Nevertheless, their analyses are too simple to utilize as a tool in our investigation. Some of the most active sociologists in contemporary Japan realized and noted the importance and relevance of the notion (or processes) to further their own research. Among the sociologists who studied on or in terms of the “unintended consequences” are R. Merton and R. Boudon. We examined Merton's notion of ‘latent function’ and ‘self-fulfilling prophecy’ and made clear their relation to “unintended consequences” Additionally, we analyzed Boudon's taxonomy and presented the alternative way of classification. We examined the seemingly odd nature of Boudon's typology of social theories. We made clear that Boudon's typology was not at all ad hoc but quite natural and logical once we had realized that the classification is based on his “methodological individualism”.

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     Social dilemmas are known to involve “unintended consequences of social actions.” That is, individual members' actions intended to improve their own benefits, when aggregated, produce consequences that are not desirable to any. What are often overlooked, in the discussion of social dilemmas, are unintended consequences of some proposed solutions to social dilemmas. In particular, it is argued that (a) administration of selective incentives may reduce members' “intrinsic motivation” to cooperate, and (b) strategic actions often initiate a vicious cycle of mutual punishment since strategic actions in social dilemmas always accompany “externality.”

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     Preceding theories of social planning couldn't adequately analyse the mechanisms of failure of social planning. They couldn't do so because they didn't pay attention to a theoretical hypothesis that social system depends on theories or knowledge of ordinary actors which we call first-order theories. Therefore they couldn't adequately deal with the case that execution of social planning changes first-order theories.
     In this paper, we set up first-order theories of planning actor, first-order theories of ordinary actors, and social mechanisms as components of the model for analysis. First-order theories of planning actor deal with the relationship between policies and results. Social mechanisms are real relationship between them. And we set up two assumptions. One is that execution of social planning changes first-order theories of ordinary actors and the other is that the change of first-order theories of ordinary actors changes social mechanisms. We get six cases when we combine verifying/ falsifying of these assumptions with correspondence/ discrepancy between first-order theories of planning actor and social mechanisms. Three cases of them are cases of failure of social planning and remainings are cases of success. We analyse the mechanisms of failure and success of social planning through these cases.

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     In this paper, we review mathematical/ quantitative studies on unintended consequences in formal and bureaucratic organizations. We examine formalization of studies on dysfunction of bureaucracy, to find two kinds of formalization strategies: one is theorizing in terms of “the more…, the more…” statements, and the other is that employing rational actor models. The two kinds of strategies are also utilized in other organizational studies that take unintended consequences into account. In addition, we outline the “garbage can model,” which is a new and promising model concerning unintended consequences in organizations. The “garbage can model,” as well as rational actor models, will further our understanding of organizational processes that generate unintended consequences.

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     Many commons play important roles in the regional life, although they often cause “social dilemmas” as well as “unintended consequences”. At first, this paper tends to arrange the forms of social dilemmas and conflicts as to the common forests (lri-ai). The common forests has been broken up in the process of modernization. This process of change including the chain of unintended consequences and conflicts will be formulated by a time dependent Markov chain model. We examine in the model under what condeitions forests from being broken up.

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     The catchable stock of fish enjoys natural processes of replenishment, but is often exposed to a crisis of diminution or depletion because of overfishing by human beings. The present paper sets up a model of a situation where, under a certain mechanism of replenishment, players (= fishermen) are offered binary choices: overfishing and moderate fishing. We showed that fishing activities turn out to be “social dilemma’ in the sense formulated by R. Dawes under specific parametric conditions involving replenishment and fishing strategies. We also examined sociological implications of the model in terms of PD (prisoner's dilemma) game.

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     We can find that invisible eugenic ideas unconsciously filter into our everyday life. And as an instance we should reconsider the normology of Gehren & Luhman which justify the norm for the meaning could reduct the complexity. In there the meaning turns into instrument that gets rid of uncertainty as hard as possible, and that satisfies our desire to relief. That is conservative normology which is quite different from Nietzsche & Weber's theory that take a position to respect aristocratism of spirit, putting up with uncertainty when in the face of unintended results. And in there unexpectedly we can discover the reproduction of a diagram ‘liberation from suppression’ which is criticised by Foucault. If we grope for the posibility of symbiosis with so called handicapped people who inclined to be excluded because of having much uncertainty, it is a indispensable work to consider critically the point of problems of the functionalistic evolution theory on basis of such an utilitarian value premise.

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     J. S. Coleman suggested a formal model of collective decision which assumes actors exchange their control over events in social systems. In this paper, a new version of Coleman's model is developed. It assumes actors exchange their control over the other actors' attitude and action. Though the new version has, like Coleman's model, little theoretical tools for the dynamic analysis of exchange process, I think it is useful for understanding the elementary properties of social association.

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[in Japanese]

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