Merging Dugger’s Concepts with O’Hara’s Principles to Advance Social and Institutional Economics

* Paper for Special Issue of the Forum for Social Economics on “Dugger’s Concepts of Social and Institutional Economics: Power, Hegemony, Evolution, Inequality, Emulation and Abundance for a Values-Based and Participatory Economics.”

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to situate, reconstruct, summarise and provide some research guidelines for advancing the scientific study of William M. Dugger’s concepts of social and institutional economics. We start by examining the nature of Dugger’s concepts and how we can dissect Dugger’s concepts with the aid of Phillip O’Hara’s principles. Then in the bulk of the paper we, firstly, contextualise these Duggerian concepts that have a direct bearing on the rule or principle of (A) Historical Specificity and the temporal dimensions of socioeconomic processes: including the concepts of realism; historical time; evolution; blind drift; plus the community’s joint stock of knowledge. Secondly, we scrutinise those concepts that link directly to the principle of (B) Circular and Cumulative Causation: concepts of interdependency, amplified dynamics, and virtuous and vicious cycles and uneven developments. Thirdly, we examine those Duggerian concepts that are associated with the principle of (C) Heterogeneous Groups and Agents: equality, gender, ethnicity, class, nationality and enabling myths. This is followed, fourthly, by a discussion of those concepts that link to the principle of (D) Contradictory Processes in the social and political economy: Dugger’s concepts of power; hegemony; vested interests versus the common good; instrumental and ceremonial functions of institutions; emulation and conspicuous consumption; plus vesting, entrenching and faking. Fifthly, the principle of (E) Ethics and Policy is correlated with the Duggerian concepts of social provisioning; participatory democracy; democratic planning; and abundance. A conclusion follows with some ideas for future research on these principles and concepts of social and institutional economics.

Keywords:

• Dugger’s concepts
• O’Hara’s principles
• historical specificity
• community’s joint stock of knowledge
• circular and cumulative causation
• heterogeneous groups
• equality
• contradictions
• power and hegemony
• ethics and policy
• participatory democracy
• abundance

JEL Classification codes:

• A14
• A31
• B52
• D02
• P00

Acknowledgements

I wish to thank the two anonymous referees, Ahmet Oncu and Thiruniraichelvi for their helpful and encouraging comments on the first version of this paper; the usual caveat applies.

Notes

¹ For an introduction to the arcane philosophy of conceptualisation and categorisation, see Margolis and Laurence (2002) and Eleanor Rosch (1999).

² Checking ‘Google Scholar’ (9 February 2018) for “principle of historical specificity” gives 170 “results” (33 for the “concept of historical specificity”); 370 results for “principle of circular and cumulative causation” (80 for the concept); 24 results for the “principle of heterogeneous agents” (12 for the concept); 12 results for “principle of internal contradiction” (27 for the concept; checking for “principle of contradiction" gets confused with the logic principle of non-contradiction, for some reason); the “principle of ethics and policy” is not so clear cut and no results were found. See O’Hara (Forthcoming) for more details.

³ Dugger seems to emphasise the ‘habits of thought’ (e.g., Dugger, 2019) rather than the ‘habits of thought and behaviour’, associated with the relationship between institutions, habits and individuals. This may point to some differences within the institutional political economy groups on this. Further research is needed.

⁴ It would be useful and interesting to compare Dugger’s view of the link between culture, institutions, habits and individuals with the vertical and horizontal ontology of Mario Bunge (1974–1989) and Dave Elder-Vass (2010, 2016). For instance, Bunge examines the relationship between different systems such as (from the general to the specific): social systems, biological systems, chemical systems and physical systems (or linked to political economy: systems such as the global, regional, macro, meso and micro, followed by the individual, chemical and physical levels). Elder-Vass, on the other hand, scrutinises the causal relationship between (from specific to general): (i) individuals and (ii) habits and reflectivities that enable and/or modify behaviour; (iii) norm circles (or ‘social circles’; such as networks of relationships within and between family members, workmates, religious associates, friendships, scholarly linkages and cross-border affiliations that generate institutionalised norms); (iv) normative institutions that are the outcome and also which help condition behaviour; and (v) organisations within which such behaviour is reproduced and also modified.

⁵ It seems that Dugger likely includes the core dynamic factor of “critical and coherent thinking” (mentioned in Table 1) within the core dynamic elements of the “community’s joint stock of knowledge”.

⁶ Jennings and Waller (1994) observe that blind drift among ‘contemporary’ institutionalists rests on several processes. The first is the complexity of cumulative causation which generates novelty. The second is linked to active agents who seek certain objectives but when amplified across all individuals generate “larger and sometimes troublesome shifts” in the spread of change. The third is the misdirected effort and misguided consequences of hierarchical processes that sabotage instrumental processes. And the fourth involves conservative standards of progress where ‘change’ is directed to more of the same, be it growth, efficiency, resources. See also the more recent work on blind drift (and counter tendencies to blind drift) in, for instance, Waller (2017).

⁷ See Marilyn French’s (2008) four volumes on the world history of women and gender roles, from prehistory, through to the emergence of male dominance, and onto more contemporaneous movements; drawing on several continents and numerous nations and regions of the world.

⁸ While Dugger periodises British hegemony as 1815–1914, some other authors, such as Wallerstein (1983), cite it as 1815–1885. During 1885–1918, of course, Germany especially sought to extend its power and again during the 1930s and early-to-mid 1940s; while US hegemony emerged at the latest during the 1940s or in the immediate postwar period (1945).

⁹ Early work of Dugger (e.g., 1980) used the term “subreption” instead of “subordination”; but Dugger preferred “subordination” in most of his post-1980 works on corporate power. See Hall, Dunlap, and Mitchell-Nelson (2016) on subreption.