The project contributes to scholarship stemming from Douglass North’s theory of Limited/Open Access Orders. I focus on the role of student organisations as “playgrounds of cooperation”, where students learn to solve collective action problems and acquire what North terms the “tacit knowledge” of successful collective action. I conceptualize student organisationss as having a two-fold role: 1) as means of reproduction of the dominant institutions (in a LAO society student organisations will also tend to have LAO-type organizational structure), 2) as media of change, a focal point in which new practices may be tried and learned to be later applied to life after graduation. Of particular interest to me is the issue of leadership change and impersonal relations that are key to North’s definition of OAO-type societies. I am suggesting to bring North’s grant theory of LAO/OAO orders to the micro organizational level and focus on issues of leadership change, collective decision making in student organisations. Theoretically, this study adds a micro-perspective to North’s theory of LAO/OAO orders and attempts to show that we can observe islands of the opposite order-type (Open) in a society dominated by one grant order (Limited). I intend to conduct interviews with leaders and members of student organisations and with members of university administration responsible for managing student organisations in Russia, and later extend the study to other EE countries.
