Sustainability has three pillars: social, environmental and economic. Put differently, ‘people, planet and profit’ form the triple bottom line of sustainability. Of these three pillars, the social is ‘the least developed’ (Missimer et al. 2017a: 34; see also Murphy 2017:15) Just about every paper on the topic complains that the notion as such is not well understood. For instance, the term is said to lack ‘a coherent, clear and utilizable definition’ (Eizenberg and Jabareen, 2017: 2) see also Anderies et al. (2013), with the resulting ‘conceptual chaos’ compromising ‘the term’s utility’ (Vallance et al. 2011: 342) In other words, social sustainability research suffers from a fair amount of conceptual confusion.Footnote 1 Further, it has been argued that there is ‘a lack of a solid framework’ for analyzing social sustainability (Lami and Mecca 2020: 2) Thus, there is a need for a clear conception of social sustainability and a solid framework for applying it.

Sustainability is commonly analyzed in descriptive terms. The idea is that, to be sustainable, a system must be preserved or developed in a robust manner. However, recently sustainability research has taken a normative turn. For one thing, a wide range of values have come to play a prominent role in discussions of social sustainability. They include equity, inclusivity, participation, recognition, security, social cohesion and well-being, along with education, health and life–work balance (Dempsey et al. 2011; Eizenberg and Jabareen 2017; Magis 2010; Missimer et al. 2017a, 2017b; Murphy 2017). Furthermore, echoing others, Efrat Eizenberg and Yosef Jabareen maintain that ‘any effort to develop socially sustainable communities entails first the need to define the kind of society we want to sustain’ (2017: 2) The aim of this paper is to contribute to this normative turn. I propose to take it one step further by explicitly defining the notion of social sustainability in terms of values: for a system to be sustainable is for it to secure values. Making this more concrete requires a conception of the kind of society that is worth sustaining.

Against this background, I propose that social sustainability has three dimensions: resilience, values (in general) and justice (in particular). To give further substance to this proposal, I develop what I call ‘the Institutional Sustainability Framework.’ Social sustainability is commonly seen as a property of communities and cities (Dempsey et al. 2011; Murphy 2017; Shi et al. 2021; Weingaertner and Moberg 2014; Winston 2021). Instead, I propose to regard social sustainability as a property of a system of institutions. Doing so facilitates a clear, coherent and powerful analysis of the three dimensions of social sustainability. In particular, I discuss what it means for institutions to be resilient and I explain how institutions can realize values, including that of justice. The point of doing so is to develop the kind of framework that is needed for applying the normative conception of social sustainability in a clear and reliable manner. Thus, I argue, the normative turn needs to be accompanied by an institutional turn.

The Institutional Sustainability Framework also offers a dynamic perspective on the three dimensions. I argue that, by and large, they stand or fall together. For instance, once an institution is perceived as unjust, the extent to which participants accept it tends to decrease. When this happens, the institution becomes weaker and tends to realize less value. This does not mean, however, that unjust institutions are self-undermining. As it turns out, people have a tendency to perceive the existing situation as fair. This is what I call ‘the fair status quo bias.’ It also explains why making institutions more sustainable is so challenging. In this way, the framework illuminates the dark side of institutions.

In Sect. 1, I present and defend the normative analysis of social sustainability. Subsequently, I explain how the three dimensions of social sustainability relate to each other, both theoretically (Sect. 2) and in practice (Sect. 3). I conclude that the resulting framework provides for a new and reliable basis for social sustainability research and policy.

1 Social Sustainability: The Concept

To sustain the environment, those who use natural resources must avoid depleting them. Its preservation also requires that it is robust to external shocks. Just like ecological sustainability, economic and social sustainability are often understood in terms of these two key notions: preservation and resilience (Elmqvist et al. 2019). According to an already influential proposal, a social system is sustainable exactly if it systematically avoids degradation (Missimer et al. 2017a, 2017b). The same notions can be used to analyze that of sustainable development. To be sure, it concerns growth paths rather than steady states. But growth can also be stable and robust over time. Thus, sustainability is often understood in terms of the robust preservation or development of a system.

However, external shocks may require a system to adapt to new circumstances. And growth can lead to transformation. For instance, a growing economy might lead to an overhaul of its financial infrastructure. Because of this, sustainability often requires something other than a steady state or growth rate. By way of alternative, resilience can be taken to consist in ‘the capacity to adapt to change’ or in ‘the ability of a system to sustain itself through adaptation and occasional transformation’ (Magis 2010: 408, 412) This is a dynamic conception. It makes the distinction between sustainability and sustainable development obsolete. But it raises a new question: If resilience allows for major changes to the system, what is to be preserved?

An initially plausible answer is: the function of the system. After all, if circumstances change, a system may have to adapt if it is to continue to serve the same function. However, social systems can have functions that are objectionable. It might, for instance, promote the interests of one group over another, as in a patriarchal or racist society. As they are unjust and divisive, such systems are in need of reform. And this suggests that they are not sustainable. Hence, what is to be preserved cannot be the function of the system. These considerations support what I call ‘the normative turn’ in social sustainability research according to which social sustainability is to be regarded as an inherently normative or value-laden notion (Anderies et al. 2013; Elmqvist et al. 2019; Shi et al. 2021).Footnote 2 In particular, if it is bad, a system is unsustainable, even if it is stable. When combined with a functionalist perspective, this reveals that the key issue is not what the function of a system is but what it should be.Footnote 3

I embrace the normative turn. And I take it one step further by proposing that what the function of a social system should be is a matter of the values that it is to realize (Hindriks and Guala 2021). Furthermore, if it is to be sustainable, it should do so robustly. The resulting normative and value-based conception of sustainability sheds new light on the notion of resilience. The thing to appreciate is that robustly realizing values is not a matter of preserving a state or growth rate. Instead, it requires the capacity to adapt to different circumstances. It follows that the notion of resilience that is implicit in this proposal is both dynamic and normative. Now, to robustly realize a value is to secure it. In light of this, I propose that for a system to be sustainable is for it to secure values.Footnote 4

But what are the values that are to be realized? Recently it has been argued that specifying sustainability goals requires a conception of the kind of society that people want to sustain (Eizenberg and Jabareen 2017; Boström 2017; Davidson 2009; Elmqvist et al. 2019). Inspired by this, I propose that it requires a conception of the kind of society worth sustaining along with the values that are realized in such a society. Furthermore, I propose that one or more conceptions of justice should always be among the values to be secured.Footnote 5 To see why, consider values such as education, health and security. These are not relevant in all contexts. However, justice is a generic value that applies across the social domain. In Sect. 2.2 I argue that any social system, and in particular any institution, can be evaluated in terms of justice. This is a principled reason for including justice as a separate dimension of social sustainability.Footnote 6

A more pragmatic reason is that justice plays a particularly prominent role in policy. Of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) formulated by the United Nations (UN) in 2015, those that explicitly concern justice include ‘no poverty’ (1), ‘gender equality’ (5), ‘affordable energy’ (7) and ‘reducing inequalities’ (10). The goal ‘quality education’ requires that education be ‘inclusive and equitable’ (4). Goal 16 pertains to ‘peace, justice and strong institutions’ and is explicated in terms of peaceful and inclusive societies, along with ‘effective, accountable and inclusive institutions at all levels.’Footnote 7 Thus, I propose that social sustainability has three dimensions: resilience, values (in general), and justice (in particular).

2 Social Sustainability: The Theory

Social sustainability pertains to social systems, including communities, cities, provinces, societies, cross-border regions and intergovernmental organizations.Footnote 8 But what do these objects of sustainability have in common? All of them consist of clusters of institutions—at least given a sufficiently broad conception of institutions on which they include conventions, social norms, laws and organizations.Footnote 9 Because of this, it is convenient to regard institutions as the object of social sustainability.

There are two more principled reasons for doing so. First, the value-based conception of sustainability just proposed can be made more precise in terms of institutions. As I argue below, they can secure values. What is more, sustainable institutions robustly realize values including justice.Footnote 10 Second, identifying institutions as the object of social sustainability provides a reliable basis for developing a sustainability framework within which the value-based conception can be applied. The main purpose of a sustainability framework is to structure ‘diagnostic and prescriptive inquiry’ (Ostrom 2009: 28)Footnote 11

To get a sense as to why they are suitable for this purpose, I briefly illustrate that institutions can be evaluated in terms of their resilience, the values they realize and whether they are just. For instance, the healthcare system in a given area may collapse during a pandemic because it is not sufficiently resilient. Furthermore, a city may be safe due to its police force or its law-abiding citizens. Finally, gender roles within a society may be unjust, because they advantage men over women or because they fail to leave space for those who do not identify as either.

In light of this, I propose what I call ‘an institutional turn’ for social sustainability research. By this, I mean that institutions or systems thereof are to be regarded as the object of social sustainability. To show how fruitful this is, I go on to propose the Institutional Sustainability Framework. In Sect. 2, I introduce a theory of institutions. In subsequent subsections, I consider the three dimensions of social sustainability.

2.1 Institutions

Institutions are norm-governed social practices (Tuomela 2002; Hindriks 2019). To explain what this means, I discuss each of the three components of this definition: the notion of a social practice, that of a social norm and that of norm-governance. Along the way, I highlight some important differences from other theories. As David Hume pointed out, two people rowing a boat must maintain a suitable rhythm if they are to get anywhere. This illustrates how the participants in a social practice take into account what others do. In a similar vein, Lewis (1969) discusses how it is mutually beneficial for people to drive on the same side of the road. This reveals that their actions are interdependent in the following sense: the extent to which an action benefits someone, depends on what others do. Furthermore, agents tend to perform such actions whenever they encounter the relevant situation. In light of this, I propose that a social practice is a pattern of interdependent actions or an interdependent regularity.Footnote 12

This analysis is inspired by equilibrium theories of social practices, such as David Lewis’ (1969) theory of conventions. Interdependent regularities are sustained by preferences and expectations. Just as Lewis, I understand benefiting from an action in terms of preference satisfaction. Agents benefit from performing particular actions to the extent that they incur higher payoffs by playing this strategy instead of another one. Now, conventions facilitate coordination in situations where interests align. However, there can also be social practices in situations where interests diverge. In such situations, agents face a choice between cooperating and competing. To cooperate, they have to resolve the conflict of interest they face.

Equilibrium theories restrict the notion a social practice, and that of an institution for that matter, to regularities that sustain coordination or coordination.Footnote 13 But why not include regularities involving agents who compete with one another? Suppose politicians and business people commonly extend favors to each other. This practice benefits all of them (although it may harm others). And it works as long as they keep returning the favor. But at some point, someone might think that she rather enjoys receiving the favor without returning it. Why scratch someone else’s back once she has already scratched yours? All benefit from cooperation, but a particular individual would benefit even more if she did not reciprocate. Thus, cooperation practices can easily break down. And when they do, people end up competing with each other. My definition of a social practice as an interdependent regularity encompasses such competition practices as well.

Turning to the second component, a social norm is a normative rule. Such rules feature deontic powers, including prescriptions, prohibitions, or permissions. According to an influential account, such a rule constitutes a social norm when people subscribe to it, which means that it is generally accepted (Brennan et al. 2013; Hart 1961). Elsewhere, I have argued that acceptance is too strong a requirement (Hindriks 2019). As it turns out, a norm can function perfectly well if people do not subscribe to it, as long as they expect others to do so. For instance, students sometimes pressure each other into drinking excessively even though they dislike it themselves and do not believe that doing so is a good thing (Prentice and Miller 1993). Thus, it is overly demanding to require general acceptance. What is required instead is that each expects others to accept the rule. In other words, the normative rule must be generally acknowledged.

The next question to ask is: What does it mean for a social norm to govern a social practice? An initially attractive idea is to explicate norm-governance in terms of conformity. But this is too quick. A social norm with which few people comply can be a weak institution. For instance, the fact that towels are often stolen from hotels does not mean that there are no well-defined property rights in place. Furthermore, monogamy can be the norm even if cheating is widespread.Footnote 14 In order to allow for noncompliance, I explicate norm-governance in terms of motivation. For a social norm to govern a social practice is for it to influence the motivation of a substantial number of participants in a social practice. In other words, a social norm governs a social practice exactly if a substantial number of participants give non-trivial weight to the norm.Footnote 15

In sum, an institution is a norm-governed social practice. Given the analyses of the three components of this definition, the notion can be explicated as follows. An institution is a generally acknowledged normative rule that non-trivially increases the motivation to comply with it of those people who contribute to a particular an interdependent regularity. This explication features normative rules and interdependent regularities, which are repeated equilibria. In light of this, it forms the heart of what I have elsewhere called ‘the Rules-and-Equilibria Theory’ (Hindriks 2019).Footnote 16

This theory applies not only to conventional, social and legal norms, but also to organizations. As I see it, this is implied by Lisa Herzog’s (2018) claim that organizations serve to coordinate divided labor through hierarchies. Let me explain. Organizations make decisions by means of collective decision procedures (Collins 2019; List and Pettit 2011). These can be seen as norms that coordinates activities between the members of the organization. As such, they have to be generally acknowledged in order to be in force. Furthermore, the way those decisions are enacted is determined, to a large extent, by the roles members have within the organization (French 1984; Tuomela 1995; Miller 2010). Roles distribute tasks and divide labor in a way that encourages members to cooperate. In this way, an organization can be seen as a collection of certain coordination and cooperation norms, and thereby as a cluster of institutions. Although rudimentary, these remarks support the idea that the notions of a social practice, a social norm and norm-governance can also be useful for explaining what organizations are.Footnote 17

2.2 Resilience

According to the normative conception, institutions are sustainable to the extent that they secure values, which means that they robustly realize them. On this conception, resilience does not as such require that the institutions themselves are robust to disturbances. In fact, this kind of resilience can be a vice rather than a virtue (Elmqvist et al. 2019: 268). For instance, a dictatorship can be very stable without being sustainable, because it is oppressive (see note 4). Even so, resilient institutions might be conducive to securing values in some circumstances. I explore this here in part by investigating what makes an institution resilient.

By definition, a resilient institution is robust to internal disturbances and external shocks. Think, for instance, of moral challenges from within or fines imposed by an external authority. In contrast, a fragile institution can easily collapse. The previous discussion of norm-governance reveals that this distinction cannot be adequately explicated in terms of compliance. To be sure, if an institution is resilient, compliance is high, and, if it is weak, few participants comply. However, participants might comply when they are barely motivated to do so. This means that, if their motivation decreases only slightly, participants stop complying with its norm. This reveal that a tripartite distinction is called for. In light of this, I distinguish between strong, stable and weak institutions. An institution is weak when norm-compliance is low. It is stable when compliance is high. And it is strong when compliance is invariant across a range of circumstances.

Institutions concern problems of coordination or cooperation, depending on whether they pertain to situations in which people’s interests converge or diverge. The former are coordination institutions; the latter cooperation institutions. Although motivation is important to the strength of any institution, this holds in particular for those that involve a conflict of interest. As their interests diverge, the participants of such institutions face a problem of motivation. Social norms can resolve such problems, for instance by means of sanctions (see note 15). Thus, the weights that different people give to cooperation norms form the key determinant of their strength (Hindriks 2022).

By contrast, coordination institutions pertain to problems of information. Solving them requires forming common expectations about each other’s actions (Hindriks and Guala 2015; Gintis 2007). As they are based on past observations, such empirical expectations are the key determinant of their strength (Hindriks 2022). Forming common expectations need not be difficult. But once established, it can be very difficult to change them. To illustrate this, consider footbinding in China. This longstanding institution unraveled within a generation. According to George Mackie (1996), it served as a kind of fidelity control and was meant to increase paternity confidence. Furthermore, the practice was taken to promote family honor. Importantly, only women with bound feet were eligible as wives.

To explain how quickly it unraveled, Mackie proposes that footbinding was a convention that coordinated access to the marriage market (see also Bicchieri 2016). Because of the harm it involved, Mackie regards it as a suboptimal coordination equilibrium. But raising awareness about how unhealthy it is and about available alternatives did little to change it. Moral criticism of the practice challenged the legitimacy of the institution, but it hardly affected behavior. These observations illustrate how robust the practice was to disturbances. Even parents who did not endorse the practice wanted their daughters to be successful. And getting married was a substantial part of this.

Lasting change required another step, the formation of ‘natural foot’ societies. The members of these societies ‘pledged not to bind their daughters’ feet nor to let their sons marry women with bound feet.’ (Mackie 1996: 1011) This allowed a relatively small group to form different empirical expectations. Anti-footbinding associations provided people with a real alternative, which meant that violating the norm did not come at the cost of not being able to marry. These societies turned out to be successful and allowed the new practice of not binding feet to spread. This supports the claim that empirical expectations are indeed the most important determinant of the strength of coordination institutions.Footnote 18

So, how exactly does the strength of an institution relate to its capacity to secure value? As mentioned above, institutional strength is a vice if it frustrates the process of securing values. And weak institutions can be more amenable to social change, as it is easier to replace them with new ones. Ideally, an institution is adaptable, such that it can reinvent itself and secure value in a new way in different circumstances. But it remains a challenge to explicate what this means in practice.Footnote 19 Even so, there is more to be said about the relation between strength and value. I go on to argue first, that stronger institutions often realize more value than weaker ones and second, that valuable institutions are often stronger than those that lack value. In fact, institutions can be strong exactly because they are valuable.

2.3 Values

How do the values that an institution realizes relate to the benefits participants incur? As discussed earlier, for an institution to benefit its participants is for it to increase the extent to which their preferences are met. Their payoffs capture everything that motivates them. In this sense, they are subjective. In contrast, values do not reduce to payoffs. If something has value, it gives people reason to act even if this is not or not fully reflected in their payoffs. An agent can attribute a lot of value to something while being only moderately motivated to realize it. For instance, someone who values his health very highly may still fail to follow through on a diet. Hence, values are objective in that they can at least to some extent be independent of people’s preferences.Footnote 20

So, how do institutions realize value? Norms can sustain values or promote them. In other words, they can be constitutive of valuable states of affairs or cause them (Parfit 2011). Greeting norms sustain a respectful way of interacting. In contrast, traffic rules promote safety. Some institutions realize values in both ways. For instance, democratic institutions are partly constitutive of values such as participation and equality. Yet they also stand in causal relations to political stability in general and to peace in particular. Famously, Amartya Sen claims that ‘no famine has ever taken place in the history of the world in a functioning democracy’ (1999: 16) The underlying idea is that, because of their norms, values and virtues, democratic institutions tend to promote the interests of the people, such that famines are extremely rare.

Values are internal or external to an institution depending on whether they are part of the conception that participants have of it (MacIntyre 1981; Raz 1986). Participation is internal to democracy, just as efficiency is internal to the market. The word ‘love marriage’ suggests that love has not always been regarded as integral to this institution. By establishing ties between powerful families, it has also been used to promote peace and prosperity. Internal values will be reflected in how people evaluate behavior and in how they justify their norms. Furthermore, they tend to motivate people to comply with the relevant institutions. As external values are not part of how people conceive of a norm, the connection between the two will be less obvious. Because of this, it is less likely to motivate people to comply. It follows that, even if an institution can realize values, this need not move its participants to action.

Institutions realize values by means of norms. For them to do so, those norms have to be aligned with certain values. This means that, if a certain amount of people complies with them, their actions will indeed constitute or cause valuable states of affairs. And for this to be the case, their preferences must align with the values at issue. If they do, the norm will in all likelihood realize more value the more people comply with it. Thus, institutions realize values by their participants complying with their norms. It follows that, other things being equal, stronger institutions tend to realize more value than weaker ones. In this sense, strength fosters value.

At the same time, the fact that participants appreciate the potential of an institution to realize value can increase compliance. This is particularly likely when the value is internal to the institution. When people are motivated by a value, this can increase norm compliance, which in turn serves to realize it. Hence, positive valuations of an institution tend to strengthen it. In other words, institutions can be strong because they are perceived as valuable.

However, institutions can also be detrimental to values that are internal to them. For instance, behaviors such as exercising and smoking are increasingly moralized for health reasons (Rozin 1999). As a consequence, those who fail to live healthily are blamed for the consequences. A healthy lifestyle is increasingly seen as a matter of individual responsibility, which has become an internal value of the relevant practices. This emphasis on responsibility can backfire, however; it leads to stigmatization and undermines solidarity. This is demotivating, which makes it more difficult for people to take responsibility and live a healthy life (Täuber 2018). In this way, the value generates a vicious cycle. Thus, institutions can subvert values that are internal to them.

Finally, institutions can cause harm that is only indirectly related to their norms and values. Consider the temperature at which people set their air conditioners. This is often lower than what is needed to feel comfortable. And, if it is not, it may still be that, as the New York Times put it, ‘first world discomfort is a learned behavior.’Footnote 21 Relieving this discomfort is the benefit that this practice provides. However, the use of air conditioners has a significant external effect. By cooling their houses, hotels and offices, people warm the earth. This in turn intensifies the use of air conditioners, which results in a vicious cycle, referred to as ‘the air conditioning trap.’Footnote 22 The environment is a value that is external to the practice of using air conditioners and setting them at certain temperatures, but it is degraded all the same. Thus, institutions can also subvert values and be harmful.

2.4 Justice

Just as other values, institutions can be just in part because their participants comply with them. Yet, they can also subvert justice or have unjust side-effects. So, why regard justice as a separate dimension of social sustainability? The main reason for this is that it is a generic value. By this I mean first and foremost that any social system, as well as any institution, can be evaluated in terms of justice. Other values have a more restricted range of application. For instance, education, health and safety are local values that are specific to particular kinds of institutions. A value such as social cohesion may be more general, as it can be exemplified by families, neighborhoods, labor unions and churches alike. At the same time, however, it is orthogonal to the market, where businesses compete and consumers are anonymous. It follows that it is also restricted in its application. Footnote 23

The value of justice is in fact inherent to institutions: necessarily, any institution is either just or, to some degree, unjust. I refer to this as ‘the inherent value thesis.’ It is implied by structural features of institutions (North 1990; Hodgson 2006). First, institutions give rise to certain outcomes and advantages, including the benefits of coordination or cooperation. Their allocation gives rise to questions of distributive justice arise. Second, institutions involve rules and procedures. These can be discriminatory or otherwise disrespectful. As such, they raise questions of procedural justice. Both points are confirmed by the fact that institutions feature classifications. Think, for instance, of men and women, well-educated and poorly educated people, people of color and white people, gay people and heterosexuals. People are included and excluded, respected or misrecognized on the basis of how they are classified. Furthermore, the advantages they incur are often allocated along the same lines. Thus, the very fact that institutions involve rules and outcomes implies that they can be evaluated in terms of procedural and substantive justice.

Rawls defended the similar but importantly different claim that ‘justice is the first virtue of social institutions’ (1971: 3) By this, he meant that justice always takes priority over other values. In fact, even if they are valuable in other respects, institutions must be ‘reformed or abolished if they are unjust’ (Rawls 1971: 3). Rawls limits what I call ‘the first virtue thesis’ to the basic structure of society, to wit its major institutions.Footnote 24 Because of this, it has considerable plausibility, at least within liberal societies. However, the first virtue thesis loses its appeal if it is taken to apply to a wider range of institutions. Bob Goodin (2007) argues, for instance, that, in some contexts, humanity is more important than justice. And in non-liberal societies community- or authority-based values will often take priority.

So, how does Rawls’s first virtue thesis relate to the inherent value thesis. First, the latter is weaker than the former. The claim is that institutions can be evaluated in terms of justice, not that this value has to take priority over others. Second, it is more general. It is not limited to the basic structure of society, but extends to any and all institutions. The reason for this is that the argument for this thesis is based on structural features of institutions. Third, it is considerably more neutral. For one thing, it is consistent with different conceptions of justice. It does not, for instance, presuppose a particular currency of justice, such as desert, need, equal resources, equal welfare or equal opportunity (Miller 1999; Walzer 1983).Footnote 25 Furthermore, it is not wedded to liberalism.

The inherent value thesis serves to avoid an overly narrow approach to social sustainability and to bring justice concerns into focus. But it does not imply that justice is always a particularly important consideration. The thesis leaves open whether justice is merely a side constraint or whether it is the first or most important value of an institution. Furthermore, it remains silent on what exactly justice is. Justice can plausibly be regarded as a family of values that includes equal recognition, just procedures and a fair distribution of goods and services. And any member of this family can itself be interpreted in multiple ways. At the same time, the inherent value thesis puts pressure on those concerned about sustainable institutions in general to make their assumptions about justice explicit and to justify them. Thus, the inherent value thesis plays an important role in the Institutional Sustainability Framework that I propose here.

So, one reason for including justice as a separate dimension is that it is a generic value that is inherent to institutions. Another reason is that whether an institution is just can have consequences for the other values it involves. For instance, institutions that are perceived to be unjust tend to realize less value. To explain this in more detail, I go on to discuss the relations between the three dimensions of social sustainability. Doing so will reveal that it can be ineffective or even counterproductive to promote one dimension in isolation from the others. Instead, an integrative approach is needed to successfully promote social sustainability.

3 Strength, Justice and Other Values: A Dynamic Perspective

The three dimensions of social sustainability are interconnected. I capture their relations in terms of three propositions. Simplifying somewhat, they are: (1) strength fosters value; (2) valuations foster strength; (3) perceived injustice undermines strength. This trio of propositions reveals that changing one dimension of an institution can have important consequences with respect to the others. In fact, they tend to stand or fall together. Understanding how these dimensions are related is conducive to making institutions more sustainable as it helps to set priorities for social change. Thus, the dynamic perspective on social sustainability that I provide in this section increases the policy relevance of the framework.

3.1 Strength Fosters Value

According to the first proposition, the value of an institution tends to increase along with its strength, other things being equal. In Sect. 2.2, I argued that, in order for an institution to realize value, the preferences of the participants have to align with those values, explicitly or implicitly. If they do, the extent to which an institution realizes value tends to increase along with compliance. It follows that compliance fosters value. However, there is more to this first proposition. It concerns strength rather than mere compliance. And, as discussed in Sect. 2.1, an institution is weak when compliance is low. But it need not be strong if compliance is high.

For an institution to be strong, compliance must be robust. And this will be the case when participants have a motivation surplus: they have more motivation than is needed for compliance. Suppose that crime has dropped dramatically in some neighborhood. As it is so low, compliance can hardly increase any more.Footnote 26 But people can still become more motivated to do follow the law. But how would this affect the value of the institutions? One answer starts from the observation that the circumstances in which the institution operates are almost bound to change from time to time. And this might put pressure on compliance. Suppose that many people in the neighborhood are on holiday, such that it is easier to burgle homes and get away with it. If they had surplus motivation to begin with, they may well continue to obey the law also in these new circumstances. Thus, strong institutions realize value across a wider range of circumstances. In this sense, strength fosters value.Footnote 27

Furthermore, that someone complies is one thing, but how they do so is another matter. Someone who is very motivated to follow a norm may do so in a way that generates more value. Compare a mediocre friend to a good friend who enthusiastically goes out of his way to make your life go better. Similarly, the more committed members are to their labor union and what it stands for, the more solidarity exists among them. Finally, drivers who obey the spirit of traffic laws make the roads safer than those who merely obey the letter. Thus, surplus motivation results in a stronger commitment to an institution. This in turn can affect how someone complies with it, which in turn can increase the value that it realizes. Thus, strength fosters value in more than one way.

3.2 Valuations Foster Strength

According to the second proposition, the strength of an institution tends to change along with the value participants attribute to it, other things being equal. The idea is that strength depends on motivation, which is in turn influenced by how much someone values the institution. In Sect. 2.2, I argued that the values that an institution realizes need not be reflected in people’s preferences. However, when they do, people’s valuations increase their motivation to comply, which strengthens the institution. In terms of a slogan, valuations foster strength.

By way of example, consider the Sars-Covid-2 pandemic. Physical distancing and face masks were quickly supported by many because of presumed public health benefits. In Asian countries, wearing face masks was also supported by other values. Someone who does not wear a face mask is considered impolite and lacking in solidarity. Some Asians even regard face masks as a fashion statement. Thus, positive valuations strengthened measures to curb the virus. At the same time, negative valuations weakened them. In particular, many Americans regarded face masks as an affront to their civil liberties, and some went out and protested against such measures.Footnote 28

But what is the mechanism? Elinor Ostrom observes that a moderate level of monitoring often suffices to maintain reciprocity and trust: ‘with local monitors, conditional cooperators are assured that someone is generally checking on the conformance of others to local rules,’ which enables them to ‘continue their own cooperation without constant fear that others are taking advantage of them’ (2009: 265). However, people frequently conform to norms even when it is very unlikely that there will be sanctions. Think, for instance, of situations in which they are anonymous or in which they are not monitored at all (Bicchieri 2006: 43–45). In such situations, they conform to the norm because they regard it as legitimate and attribute significance to it as such: they are internally rather than externally motivated (Sect. 2).

People typically regard a norm as legitimate because they take some virtue or value to support it. Bicchieri makes the point as follows:

When the norm has become a well-entrenched practice and we have come to attribute a certain virtue to what it prescribes, external sanctions seldom play a role in inducing conformity. … [W]e often come to attribute to it some intrinsic value. (2006: 43)


In light of this, I propose that valuations foster the strength of an institution by increasing the extent to which its norm motivates them.

Sanctions are crucial for inducing compliance when a new norm is introduced. However, as Bicchieri’s own empirical research reveals, norm-based motivation often acquires more significance over time. Furthermore, once a norm is well entrenched—internalized and widespread in the relevant group— sanctions rarely suffice to induce compliance (Bicchieri 2006: 24). This in turn means that when an institution has been around for some time, valuations play an important role in motivating people to conform. In fact, it is unlikely that an institution will be strong if it is not highly valued.

As another example, consider the value of public participation in decision processes—which plays a central role in social sustainability—and its relation to the strength of an institution. When decisions are made in a top-down manner without actively involving the public, their acceptability to the public is typically low (Wolsink 2007). Conversely, it might be high when the public can influence decision-making. Furthermore, it has been suggested that whether this is the case depends on perceived justice, or ‘perceived fairness,’ as it is called in the literature (Gross 2007). A recent experimental study about renewable energy projects confirms these claims (Liu et al. 2020). It reveals that public participation increases the extent to which a policy is acceptable to the public, in particular when it is perceived as fair.

The study reveals that the legitimacy of an institution plays a central role in this respect. First, the more a policy is perceived as fair, the higher its public acceptability. Now, how fair it is taken to be depends on the extent to which the public regards the decision-making process as open, transparent and taking different interests into account. Such features support the idea that an institution is justified and legitimate. Furthermore, the higher its acceptability, the more favorable it is evaluated. Presumably, this means that the strength of the institution increases. In this way, the study confirms that norm legitimacy increases strength.

Second, public participation increases perceived fairness in general, and even more so when the public can influence major aspects of the project rather than minor ones. Thus, perceived value increases perceived legitimacy. Strikingly, in one study, participation had no direct effect on acceptability; in another it was negative (Liu et al. 2020). This strongly supports the claim that perceived value affects strength via perceived fairness. It increases the strength of the institution, but only if its norm is perceived as legitimate.

3.3 Perceived Injustice Undermines Strength

According to Ostrom, ‘fairness is a crucial attribute of the rules of robust systems’ (2009: 263). By this, she means that an institution must be just if it is to be strong. Although this may well be true, the available empirical studies support a weaker claim: when an institution is perceived as unjust, people are typically disinclined to comply with it, such that its strength decreases considerably. Thus, perceptions of injustice are detrimental to the value that it realizes. In light of this, the third and last proposition that I will put forward here is that perceived injustice undermines strength.

Joel et al. (1992) studied employees who regarded the way in which their organization treats people as unfair. As it turns out, their support of the corporation’s goals and values decreased drastically, along with their work effort and their intention to continue to work at the organization. Another study considered students with a low socio-economic status faced with new and substantial university fees (Ahmed and Braithwaite 2007). Those who ended up with student debt perceived the scheme as less fair than those who did not. Subsequently, they were more dismissive of the tax system, which in turn led to tax evasion. As a final example, consider organ allocation in the United States (Boulware et al. 2007). It is widely believed that the organ allocation system discriminates on the basis of race and income. Those who regarded the system as unfair were substantially less inclined to donate.

These studies reveal that negative justice valuations have a particularly pronounced negative effect on institutional strength. This reveals that people attribute a lot of significance to justice. Furthermore, an institution can hardly be stable if it is not perceived as fair. And when an institution is perceived as unfair, compliance is likely to be low. It follows that institutions that are perceived as unjust tend to become weak. In other words, perceived injustice undermines strength.

However, it would be too quick to conclude that injustices resolve themselves. For one thing, there are often people who stand to benefit from the status quo. And even those who do not might not care enough to remedy prevailing injustices. For reasons such as these, a weak institution that is perceived as unjust may persist for a considerable amount of time. A second problem is that unjust institutions are frequently mistaken for just ones. This is due to what I call ‘the fair status quo bias,’ according to which people are disposed to perceive the prevailing institutions in a society as fair.

As it turns out, people are often inclined to justify the system of institutions they face. Furthermore, many of their justifications concern justice. Because of this, they frequently end up believing that the system is in fact fair, irrespective of whether it is. In this way, system justification gives rise to the fair status quo bias. But why do people engage in system justification? According to social identity theory, high-status groups have an interest in doing so because it satisfies their need to maintain a positive social identity. This holds even if their position in the social hierarchy is unjustified. So, the real challenge is to explain why the members of low-status groups tend to engage in system justification.

Social psychologists have proposed several explanations for this. A couple of theories postulate a distinct motive for this, the system justification motive. According to the just world theory (JWT), people have a need to regard the world around them as just (Lerner 1980). The system justification theory (SJT) invokes this need to explain system justification by low-status groups. Their members will be inclined to discount evidence against the legitimacy of the system. Furthermore, they will tend to justify or rationalize the status quo, for instance by blaming the victim, victim derogation or demonizing the perpetrator (Jost and Toorn 2011; Jost and Banaji 1994). In this way, they end up regarding an unjustified and often unjust system as just. This in spite of the fact that this is against their interests.

However, the more recent social identity model of system attitudes (SIMSA) rejects the notion of a system justification motive and proposes that system justification can be explained in terms of social identity after all, also when low-status groups engage in it. The reason for this is that social identification always takes plays in a particular context. It can, for instance, be comparative, as when the members of a low-status group compare themselves with a group that is even lower in status. The prevailing system supports a favorable self-conception relative to that group, which is why there is no need to criticize it. In fact, the members of the low-status group even have an interest in justifying it. And if they do, their rationalizations will align with their interests (Owuamalam et al. 2016, 2017).Footnote 29

Furthermore, people can have plural identities. For instance, poor Americans might identify both as poor and as Americans. Given that they are poor, they would be better off if healthcare were provided by the government. However, free market capitalism is a defining value of their national identity. So, they will vote against public healthcare if they identify more strongly with their national identity than with their socioeconomic status (Owuamalam et al. 2019: 369). More generally, strong identification with a superordinate group can explain system justification by low-status groups. In contrast to SJT, SIMSA leaves ample space for low-status groups to criticize the system and pursue social change that favors them. So, it explains the fair status quo bias, but not without qualification.Footnote 30

The upshot is that people tend to be overly optimistic about whether institutions match their standards of justice. This in turn means that even though perceived injustices undermine strength, institutions that are in fact unjust may well be strong and difficult to change. In practice, institutions often discriminate, dominate, exploit and oppress (Cudd 2006; Haslanger 2012; Young 2011). However, the extent to which people resist them is limited. This can be explained in terms of the fair status quo bias, at least in part. It reveals that structural injustices are often obscured and difficult to illuminate. Thus, there is a dark side to unjust institutions that explains why they often go unchallenged. This reveals why structural injustices are often so resilient.Footnote 31

4 Conclusion

Inspired by the normative turn in social sustainability research, I have proposed a value-based conception according to which sustainable systems secure values. If a social system is sustainable, it robustly realizes values, including justice. Thus, social sustainability has three dimensions: resilience, values (in general) and justice (in particular). Which values matter depends on the kind of society that is worth sustaining. Furthermore, I have advocated an institutional turn: social sustainability is best seen as a property of institutions, rather than, for instance, of communities and cities.

At the heart of the proposed Institutional Sustainability Framework lies the claim that institutions are social norms that govern social practices. Institutions can secure values, because they consist of social norms. The stronger an institution, the more value it generates, other things being equal. Furthermore, positive valuations foster strength. But perceived injustice undermines it. This framework forms a solid basis for applying the value-based conception of social sustainability in contemporary societies. It identifies the structural features of institutions due to which they can be sustainable. Because of this, it can be used for assessing institutions and for setting priorities for reform.

Furthermore, the framework supports an integrative approach. As I have argued, it can be ineffective or even counterproductive to promote one dimension in isolation from the others. Finally, it fits seamlessly with the Sustainable Development Goals of the United Nations. They center around issues such as health, gender equality, inclusive education, peace, security and the protection of human rights, which reveals the central role that values play in them. Thus, the Institutional Sustainability Framework provides for a new and solid basis for social sustainability research and policy.