Power, institutionalization, and temporality: Toward a political reconceptualization of social order

This article develops a critical analysis of the theoretical framework of social order proposed by Grothe-Hammer and Berkowitz. Their model offers a parsimonious, analytically decomposable account of order, yet its dimensions of “determination” and “variability” (articulated through non-decision and non-decidability) risk depoliticizing order if read in isolation from agency, power, and temporality. Drawing on sociological new institutionalism and critical theories of power, the article shows that every “non-decision” constitutes a sedimented human intervention. We propose a reformulation that complements the original dimensions with the concepts of institutionalization and alterability allowing social order to be reconceived as power institutionalized over time. Stability and change are read not as ontological properties, but as historical moments of the same dynamic, mediated by asymmetrical power relations. The framework recovers the political character of social order and enables the analysis of contemporary crises by treating apparently immutable configurations as historically constituted and analytically alterable.