In a formative context, the institutions structure conflict over government power and capital allocation, whereas the imaginative framework shapes the preconceptions about possible forms of human interaction.
Through this, a formative context further creates and sustains a set of roles and ranks, which mold conflict over the mastery of resources and the shaping of the ideas of social possibilities, identities and interests.
[4] While a formative context of a society exerts a major influence on the course of social actions and behaviors, it is itself hard to challenge, revise, or even identify in the midst of everyday conflicts and routines.
The objective criteria are simply that if a substitution of the proposed structure affects the hierarchies or cyclical conflicts—if it alters the social divisions—then it can be included in the formative context.
[5][6] The formative context of the North Atlantic democracies can be organized into four clusters of institutional arrangements: work, law, government, and occupational structure.