[calibraxis]

It's clearly useful to describe a structure independently from its consitutent atoms. Anyone who doesn't do so is virtually unable to communicate.

Social structures do things, and are amenable to institutional analysis. This allows us to act without omniscience. Institutional analysis allows one to analyze institutions independently of individuals; replace all the people, and you may nevertheless expect similar outcomes. Thus we can perform institutional analysis on governments, corporations, mafias, economies, consumers, managers, startups, etc.

If this weren't the case, humans wouldn't form institutions in the first place.

[anigbrowl]

I wholly agree, but surely you've noticed that many people take the observation that 'some governments sometimes do things' to mean that 'all governments inevitably do those things,' which is plainly untrue.