Exploring the Production of Social Order

In this article, we consider the production of order. Social order is a product of community action, which is to say it is deliberately produced; its production can be explored with the tools of price theory. There are two categories of inputs—informal and formal, where the first involves customs, traditions and social norms and the latter involves regulation, statutes, and police. We argue that people seek to form homogeneous communities where order is produced at low cost, using informal means. Communities that can produce order at relatively low cost will use less of the formal input, unless required to do so by legislation. Formal efforts to force the production of order by a larger heterogeneous polity paradoxically can erode the ability of homogeneous communities to produce order by informal means. In our statistical examination of the relationship between homogeneity and order using U.S. data, we find support for these notions.