Governing Condominiums and Renters with Legal Knowledge Flows and External Institutions

This article explores the intertwined roles of legal knowledge and external institutions in condominium governance using a sociology of governance framework. Condominium legislation spread in North America in the 1960s. By the 1970s, renters had become the condominium's primary “other.” The article elaborates legal governance and strategies of property management and private insurance that converge on renters in condominiums. Through this analysis, the renter category is shown to be one point of convergence of mutually reinforcing institutional processes of juridification, commodification, and risk avoidance. Condominium governance is revealed as more complex, heterogeneous, and dependent upon legal knowledge flows through channels and “excerpting” practices beyond the courts, and upon external institutions beyond statute‐mandated condominium boards, than previously acknowledged. Implications for critical legal studies and condominium governance policy are discussed.