Jessy Kate Schingler & Primavera de Filippi — An Introduction to Extitutional Theory (2017)
Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society, Harvard University.
Schingler and de Filippi introduce extitutional theory to describe the informal, networked, self-organizing dimension of social life that sustains institutions but cannot be institutionalized without being transformed or destroyed. Every institution depends on an extitutional outside — the informal relationships, practices, and knowledge that are too context-specific, relational, or dynamic to be captured in formal rules, roles, and procedures.
The theory draws on complexity and network science: extitutional dynamics are characterized by emergence, self-organization, distributed agency, and resistance to hierarchical control. Attempts to formalize extitutional practices — to bring them inside the institution — typically kill what made them valuable. The Taylorist management of tacit knowledge is the paradigmatic failure mode.
For OM: this paper provides the foundational vocabulary that OM’s work extends and partially revises. Where Schingler and de Filippi treat extitutional dynamics as the informal undersides of all institutional processes, OM treats extitutions as discrete entities — specific organizational forms that strategically deploy institutional legibility to protect protocol undergrounds. The “trickster” character and walkaway test are OM’s extensions of the original framework.