Institutional Anomie Theory: An Evolving Research Program

Abstract

This chapter presents the current evolving research program of Institutional Anomie Theory (IAT)—originally a macro-social theory of crime that incorporates the potentially destructive tendencies inherent in market capitalist economies. By focusing on basic features of social organization, IAT locates the sources of crime in cultural pressures toward anomie and imbalances in the institutional structures of societies. This chapter traces IAT’s intellectual influences from the classics of Durkheim’s and Merton’s anomie theory to the writings of Parsons and Polanyi and explains how the theory is based on a synthesis of these insights with additional elements of conventional criminology. A comprehensive review of the large body of studies that tested IAT’s propositions follows. This entails the bulk of studies, which have used macro-social units of varying scale (nations, counties, cities), but also the increasing number of studies that have applied IAT to inform individual- and multi-level analyses. A concluding discussion identifies two key challenges for future IAT research development: explaining short-run changes in crime, and expanding the scope conditions of IAT by encompassing societal responses to crime in the form of legal punishment.