Central theoretical ambitions of social ontology could be summarised in two points:

(1) do social artifacts really exist or are they just useful fictions?, and

(2) if they exist, are there any metaphysical criteria of their identity understood in a narrow sense (i.e. as necessary, not sufficient conditions).

With regard to institutions, understood as stated in the classic characteristics of John Searle as systems of constitutive rules, I argue for partially affirmative answer to the above questions. According to Searle‘s realistic claim, the universally accepted institutional facts presuppose the existence of certain institutions. The question is which ones? Searle’s suggestion is vague and too general to be operative. The pragmatic mechanism of presupposition does not allow to unreservedly describe ontological commitments of the institutional discourse.

The institutional realism hypothesis is primarily intended to explain the normative meaning of institutional discourse expressed in terms of rights and obligations. My claim is that only these institutions should be considered as real, which existence belongs to the presupposition of a particular class of propositions – namely, the criteria of practical identity of rational agents. The concept of practical identity has been introduced in contemporary analytic philosophy by Christine Korsgaard. These identities are fundamental individual beliefs: in the absence of them an agent would have no rational reasons to act. It should be noted that many logically unrelated identities may be assigned to a single subject. One of these identities is self-understanding as a citizen. Civic identity – the fact that one is a subject of rights and obligations – presupposes the existence of institutions, which ground the rationality of one’s action in the legal sphere. For example, the fact that subject S makes a legal claim presupposes that (a) S has the legal personality and (b) there are institutions to protect S’s legitimate claim.

The criterion just outlined has several basic advantages. Firstly, it links the conditions of personal identity to the existence of social institutions. In this sense, certain genres of institutions have the ontological primacy over persons (but not e.g. over organisms or humans) because they participate in the criterion of personal identity. Secondly, this criterion allows to determine a timeframe of the existence of a given institution, which could be of great importance in practical contexts (when the existence of an institution at a given time determines the validity of e.g. a decision issued by it). Thirdly, the criterion is not simply two-valued, but can be graded, that is, valued within the interval <0; 1>. Fourthly, and finally, the criterion associates ontological investigations with sociological research, setting an interesting perspective for applied ontology, which in this context is more informative than the traditional analysis of concepts and purely armchair philosophy.

However, I will additionally defend the view that as for institutions that have no such practical, foundational significance, one can (but does not have to) accept fictionalism. Altogether, my position establishes a moderately realistic and pragmatic view on social ontology.