Chapter 3: FINDING THE INSTITUTIONAL RULES.

This chapter focuses on finding the environment institutional rules. To conceive of institutions as rules of the social game links institutions closely with the way individuals think. Rules reflect cause-and-effect relationships. But causality is also a fundamental organizing principle of individual thinking. Individuals tend to recount their professional opinions with narratives that have a causal structure. The main institutional argument of the book "Institutions in Environmental Management," states that the actions of environmental decision makers are largely determined by a feedback between institutions and the mental models of these decision makers. The predominant institutional order in the case study societies prioritizes short-term economics over long-term sustainability, which persuades environmental decision makers to adopt cognitively dissonant mental models. While thinking that long-term environmental concerns should guide their decisions, the decision makers believe that short-term economic concerns will in the end determine which policies will be implemented.