Introduction to the special issue: William M. Dugger’s concepts of social and institutional economics

Abstract

William M. Dugger’s contributions to social and institutional economics are critically evaluated, reconstructed, summarized, and applied to various problems and issues in this special issue. This short paper introduces the special issue and summarizes the papers included here. It explains how Phillip O’Hara’s paper merges Dugger’s concepts with O’Hara’s principles in order to situate, reconstruct, and summarize the concepts. It summarizes William M. Dugger’s paper, where the concepts of vesting, entrenching, shirking, and faking are applied to the negative impact of competition on the quality of life and socioeconomic performance of modern capitalism. It describes how Ahmet Öncü applies some of Dugger’s concepts to the role of engineers in Turkey through attempts to promote the community’s joint stock of knowledge and the common good. It outlines William Waller’s discussion of Dugger’s concepts of power and hegemony, and the theoretical and methodological contributions Dugger makes to these concepts. It surveys Samuel Rosenberg’s paper, which explains the continuing relevance of Dugger’s concept of the administered labor market. And it sketches Alexander Dunlap’s analysis of Dugger’s four invaluation processes vis-à-vis the medical, ecological, and economic anomalies with flush toilet infra-systems. A conclusion follows.

Keywords:

• Dugger’s concepts
• social and institutional economics
• principles
• joint stock of knowledge
• vesting
• entrenching
• shirking and faking
• vested interests v. common good
• power and hegemony
• administered labor markets
• invaluation processes

Keywords:

• JEL Classifications: A31
• B52
• P10
• Z13

1. OBJECTIVES OF THE SPECIAL ISSUE

This special issue of the Forum for Social Economics seeks to contribute to the task of advancing social and institutional economics through analyzing, applying, reconstructing, and critically evaluating William M. Dugger’s concepts. In the literature, there are two papers where Dugger clearly sets out his concepts (Dugger, 1989a, 1995), but Dugger also discusses such concepts (and others) in his other works, usually much more informally or unwittingly. Dugger (1984) sets the scene in his first book, An Alternative to Economic Retrenchment, (and in published papers linked to themes of this book) for his analytical attempts to not only explain the major problems emerging in the evolution of capitalism, especially its US variant; but also in providing significant conceptualization to advance the science of social and institutional economics.

This first book centers on the anomalous nature of inequality, concentrations of power, and corporate hegemony, that reduces the socioeconomic performance of the U.S. economy, through several contradictions adversely affecting its institutions. These themes were deepened and made more rigorous in his second and third books, Radical Institutionalism (Dugger, 1989b) and Corporate Hegemony (Dugger, 1989c). It was in his second book that the first paper emerged on the main concepts of social and institutional economics. These concepts included those of circular and cumulative causation, enabling myths, emulation, power and status, equality, instrumentalism, blind drift, participatory democracy, and democratic planning. For the first time in the history of social and institutional economics, its main contemporary concepts were laid out plain for all to see.

However, this paper, from my searches, seemed to stimulate no specific and detailed secondary literature, criticism, elaboration, application, or reconstruction, so as to continue the process of conceptual development in social and institutional economics. Yet it is clear that Dugger became a major leader of the radical institutionalist movement (along with Daniel Fusfeld, Ron Stanfield, and Rick Tilman), gathering a large following, as well as providing stimulating intellectual guidance for a whole generation of social and institutional economists. Dugger then published a collection of his papers in his fourth book, Underground Economics (Dugger, 1991); and then edited two other books, one (his fifth book) on The Stratified State (Dugger & Waller, 1992), and another (his sixth book) on Inequality (Dugger, 1996).

It was during this time, the mid-1990s, that Dugger published his second paper on the main concepts of social and institutional economics (Dugger, 1995); including the concepts of historical specificity, critical and coherent thinking, vested interests versus the elites, participatory democracy, the instrumental and ceremonial functions of institutions, and community. His influence was continuing, as he was elected President of the Association for Evolutionary Economics (AFEE), the Association for Institutional Thought (AFIT) and the Association for Social Economics (ASE). Then, came a further flurry of papers that also inspired his new books, including his seventh on Reclaiming Evolution (Dugger & Sherman, 2000), and his eighth which was a four-volume set entitled Evolutionary Theory in the Social Sciences (Dugger & Sherman, 2002). His influence subsequently flourished as he was elected to the Veblen-Commons Award (2005), the most important in heterodox economics; and his flurry of books continued through the ninth, titled Economic Abundance (Dugger & Peach, 2009), and the tenth, Cultural Economics and Theory (Hamilton, Atkinson, Dugger, & Waller, 2010).

Yet still no major secondary literature emerged on his major concepts, even though he had laid the foundations in the first concepts paper, and explained how such concepts had evolved in the ‘new environment’ in the second concepts paper. Nonetheless, many papers did emerge on the subjects Dugger was researching, and inspired by his work, on the critical anomalies of inequality, corporate hegemony, institutional evolution, and cultural change. These unwitting concepts stimulated other heterodox economists to analyze the major problems of modern capitalism, as it evolved through the difficult years of Thatcherism and Reaganomics, neoliberalism, the Global Financial Crisis (of 2008ff), and the more recent emergence of Trumpian economics (2017ff).

While much of the attention to Dugger’s research emanated from the centrality of the problems he concentrated on, and the lucidity of his around 100 papers and 10 books, probably equally important factors were the charismatic nature of his personality, and the excellence with which he presented his findings. It has to be said also that Dugger wrote more book reviews than anyone could imagine (118 to date), typically very balanced surveys of the books, including commendations where relevant and critical comments were also notable. This gave scores of authors and readers further insights into Dugger’s incisive mind and scholarly breadth. Groupings of social and institutional economists followed his scholarly and organizational activities as he led us into the foray of drawing attention to the critical problems of our age.

The paucity of detailed attention to his concepts (as a whole; whether unwitting or otherwise), however, perhaps fed the wrong yet popular assertion of social and institutional economists being descriptive and not theoretical in their orientation. This special issue was thus to be a critical analysis and detailed application and modification of his concepts; and certainly not the usual general papers with little or no details on the contributions of the ‘first candidate’ that accompany most festschrifts. This one would be centered first and foremost on the major Duggerian concepts of social and institutional economics. But more: I wanted to ensure that the concern was with linking concepts with crucial problems of the modern world. We were to eschew medieval scholasticism, disinterested inquiry, and mere abstract analysis; and encourage the linkage of theory and practice; concepts with applications; conceptualization imbued with empirics; while also advancing the theory.

2. CONTENTS OF THE PAPERS

The process of eliciting contributors to this special issue was a pleasure, and even more enjoyable was reading and getting referee reports for the contributors. The contributors had a good reason to write excellent papers; after all they were writing their papers about Bill Dugger, including applications to the real world; and so their papers had to reflect, at least in part, their relationship to a special colleague. The idea was to apply Dugger’s concepts to the real world; except the first paper which was to be a more general one critically evaluating the concepts from a theoretico-empirical point of view; and providing guidelines for future research. The papers start with those dealing with issues of a more general nature and later move to those of a more specific orientation.

The first three papers are of a relatively general nature. The first of these, “Merging Dugger’s Concepts with O’Hara’s Principles to Advance Social and Institutional Economics”, by O’Hara (2019), seeks to dissect, analyze, reconstruct, and summarize Dugger’s concepts. I started off by reading all that I could of Dugger’s papers and books. As I got to the end of this process, I realized that I could encompass “all” of Dugger’s witting and unwitting concepts within the framework of my principles of social and institutional economics. This indeed was the simplest, easiest and most useful way of explaining Dugger’s thought to a broad audience. For instance, under the umbrella of the principle of historical specificity, I could explain Dugger’s concepts of realism, historical time, blind drift, evolution, and the community’s joint stock of knowledge. Similarly, under the ‘tree’ of the principle of circular and cumulative causation are the concepts of interdependency, amplified dynamics, plus virtuous and vicious circles and uneven developments. Within the context of the principle of heterogeneous groups and agents are the concepts of relative equality, gender, class, ethnicity, nationality, and enabling myths. The principle of contradictory processes includes numerous contradictions, including two critical ones: instrumental and ceremonial functions of institutions, plus the vested interests and the common good; plus other crucial concepts such as power and hegemony, emulation and conspicuous consumption, and vesting, entrenching and faking. And lastly, within the confines of the principles of ethics and policy are Dugger’s explicit concepts of social provisioning, participatory democracy, democratic planning and abundance. Then I outline a research agenda to extend this framework into the future.

The second broad paper in this special issue, Dugger’s (2019) “Doleful Dynamics of Competition: Inequality and Fakery in Modernity”, develops a general theory of competitive behavior involving the concepts of vesting, entrenching, faking and shirking. Dugger shows that since the Columbian exchange of the late 1400s westerners have established and thereafter maintained until recently competitive advantages over other cultures in business, polity and society. First mover advantages led to self-confidence and waves of successful vesting forward motion for the core, while simultaneously reinforcing riptides of relative backwardness for the periphery. The core entrenched this success through various rules and institutions involving networks of relationships enhancing their property rights over capital, knowledge, information and trade secrets at the expense of the periphery. To maintain the illusion of inherent superiority involved a myriad of fake institutions associated with enabling myths, such as the auctioneer in economic theory, rules, and wars against foreigners in polity, plus anomalous statistical methods to (for instance) reduce official unemployment rates. These mechanisms enable ongoing shirking to reduce costs of business through lax environmental, labor, consumer, and marketing laws while modes of inequality are maintained and even heightened both within the core and between the core and the periphery (while some critical areas, especially in Asia, advance toward the semi-periphery and eventually probably to the core). Dugger argues that the systemic contradictions are enabled through circular and cumulative motion of periodic and ongoing instability and inequality, as the vested interests exploit the community’s joint stock of knowledge against the common good.

The third general paper in this special issue, “Turkish Social Political Economy History in the Light of Dugger’s Reconstructed Concepts of Veblenian Institutionalism”, by Öncü (2019), seeks to analyze the role of the progressive engineers in Turkey during the 1960s and 1970s, from the critical perspective of some of Dugger’s concepts. Öncü surveys the recent history of Turkey, from the perspective of the concepts of the vested interests versus the common people and the community’s joint stock of knowledge; plus the role of the state and the substantial citizens in this process. While helping enormously in promoting progressive forces such as democracy, education, state capital, and social services, the engineers and their allies are said also to have anomalous elements in their theories and enabling myths that hindered success. In this they unwittingly failed to recognize that the state is usually the bulwark of the business class, and that technology is not simply progressive but also potentially ceremonial in promoting the vested interests. The engineer’s simple-minded notions of class and technology thus underplayed the power of the state in supporting business over the common people and also its role in exploiting the community’s joint stock of knowledge for the benefit of capital.

The next three papers are more specific in their scope. The fourth essay, “A Reconsideration of William Dugger’s Analysis of Power”, by Waller (2019), seeks to critically evaluate Dugger’s concept of power. Waller starts by recognizing that Dugger defines power vis-à-vis the roles that people play in the institutions of society, which enables them to tell other people what to do; and that this power is ultimately sanctioned by the state through an array of rules, laws and processes. The institutional relationships that people engage in within the corporation, family, state, school, church, and so on are the means by which people accumulate power. But the core of this power in modern society, especially in the United States, is situated in the corporate system; which is the hegemonic institution of modern capitalism. Subordination, contamination, emulation and mystification are the instruments of hegemony. Through these institutions, there are specific modes of power, including gendered power, which is typically enabled through patriarchy; also class, which is reproduced through exploitation; ethnicity, which is generated via discrimination; and nation, which is propagated through predatory laws, military exercises and polity. Waller concludes his essay by summarizing the innovations associated with Dugger’s approach to power (which were detailed in the paper), and suggesting ways of improving the analysis.

The fifth paper, the second more specific one in this special issue, “The ‘Administered Labor Market’ Reconsidered”, by Rosenberg (2019), scrutinizes the ongoing empirical validity of Dugger’s concept of the administered labor market (ALM). The ALM is a concept developed by Dugger in the 1980s to explain the bureaucratic workings of the upper levels of employment and promotion of white collar personnel through non-market means such as filtering by educational credentials (from external supply), internal sponsorships and mentoring, and generally the economic power of the corporation and the ability of personnel to navigate the norms and etiquette of corporate bureaucracies, especially in the core oligopolistic enterprises. Rosenberg examines recent trends of outsourcing labor, developing more flexible rules and conventions regarding salaries and conditions, the emergence of deep recessions, greater foreign and domestic competition, and the more recent waves of mergers and acquisitions. He concludes that the ALM in considerable measure still operates according to bureaucratic rules through internal corporate processes. Flexible labor market conditions, contract labor, and other short-term employment relationships have expanded considerably, but a sizable portion of upper-echelon employment conditions still operates through ALMs, especially in well-established large corporations, the public sector, and for female executives.

The final paper in this special issue, “From Primitive Accumulation to Modernized Poverty: Examining Flush Toilets through the Four Invalidation Processes”, by Alexander Dunlap (2019), critically evaluates the contribution of flush toilet “infrasystems” to human health and the environment through the window of Dugger’s four mechanisms of “invaluation” (contamination, subordination, emulation and mystification). Flush toilet systems are the normal means of emasculating human waste products in developed nations, but globally they are still in the minority of households (especially in the periphery). Dunlap points out that these processes produce contamination through greater levels of straining on the toilet, the wastage of nitrogenous resources, and the pollution of waterways. They also subordinate people’s ways of life to the expansion of markets and sales associated with household renovation, the image of stylishness and coziness, and the sanctuary of relaxation and comfort in the “restroom”; rather than reproducing a more ecologically sound and healthy set of bathroom norms. Emulation is a core mechanism as especially developing nations seek to rise in the league tables of the international sanitation ladder. And such flush toilet systems promote mystification of their industrial and marketing values as they separate people from the results of their waste, distance them from the wasteful use of resources, and alienate them from the aquatic dead zones that often result from the technology.

3. CONCLUSION

The purpose of this special issue is to critically evaluate and apply some of the core Duggerian concepts of social and institutional economics to crucial issues of the contemporary world. This also involves presenting readers with an overall framework or conceptual edifice with which to situate social and institutional economics. From this readers can draw inspiration in advancing the science of social and institutional economics into the future, by deepening its conceptual apparatus and also by studying and hopefully solving crucial socioeconomic problems. Ultimately it seeks to advance an understanding of how to promote structural change in order to lessen the extent of contradictory processes which generate substantial problems of inequality, un(der)employment, financial crises, deep recession, global warming, community dislocation, crime and injustice, alienation and exploitation, discrimination, oppression, violence, and war. This special issue should stimulate advances in the two realms of conceptual development and problem solving, so as to promote abundance, participatory democracy and relative equality to enhance the common good.