Political Economy and Its Future: Conceptual and Institutional Issues

ABSTRACT

This article begins by identifying different ways of conceptualizing political economy. In light of this conceptual discussion, it looks at political economy from an institutional perspective, in two different senses. First, paying special attention to the distinction between mainstream and nonmainstream in economics and in other disciplines, it considers the institutions of contemporary political economy, i.e., the rules of behaviour and of thought that are socially shared among one or more groups of academics involved with political economy. It argues that there are good institutional and intellectual reasons to strategically promote further interdisciplinary integration between various approaches in nonmainstream economics and in the mainstream of other disciplines. Second, the article examines institutions in political economy, i.e., institutions in the reality outside academia that are relevant for political economy. Institutional issues in political economy are highlighted here not only because they are relevant and ubiquitous outside academia, but also because they are especially promising as subject matters about which that much needed interdisciplinary integration of approaches in political economy can occur.

KEYWORDS:

• Political economy
• institutions
• mainstream economics
• interdisciplinarity

JEL CODES:

• P16
• A12
• A14
• B52

Acknowledgment

The comments by anonymous referees are gratefully acknowledged.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Applying the concept of mainstream economics proposed in Dequech (2007) outside the United States may yield different results. Ideas that are marginalized in the United States may be part of mainstream economics defined nationally in another country.

2 See https://assoeconomiepolitique.org/presentation-2/. All translations are the author’s. The adoption of the term ‘political economy’ in the sense of nonmainstream economics is even clearer in the case of the Brazilian Society of Political Economy (Sociedade Brasileira de Economia Política), whose ‘primary objective is to assure ample room of discussion for all theoretical currents and subfields of study that understand economics an essentially social science and that, for this very reason, have the critique of mainstream economics as their common element’ (https://www.sep.org.br/01_sites/01/index.php).

3 See https://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?show=aimsScope&journalCode=mijp20.

4 See https://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?show=aimsScope&journalCode=crpe20.

5 See http://www.wapeweb.org/html/about/aboutus/index.html.

6 Several of the following comments on nonmainstream economics borrow heavily from Dequech (2021).

7 Some nonmainstream economists claim a substantial unity, but in my view such claims implicitly exclude or misconstrue at least some nonmainstream approaches, such as Austrian or Sraffian economics, for example.

8 On their different types of influence, see Dequech (2013a, p. 85).

9 Although mainstream economics is elitist, even the mainstream economists outside the elite are much less marginalized than nonmainstream ones, on all the criteria that characterize prestige and influence (or the lack thereof).

10 This and the next few paragraphs draw substantially on Dequech (2021).

11 In fact, this is something that I have been doing in my own work since my PhD dissertation.

12 With a different framework, Campbell (1997, p. 40) argued years ago that ‘[t]he development of a well-rounded institutional theory of political economy requires both a theory of action and a theory of constraint that accounts for how the interests, preferences, identities and ideas that motivate actors are socially constructed and affect policy making and institution building’. Progress along similar lines is still necessary. The institutional perspective defended here — like the ones adopted by many other authors — is much broader than is suggested by Streeck’s (2011, p. 137) statement, in his own take on institutional political economy, that ‘[s]ocial science institutionalism considers social systems to be structured by sanctioned rules of obligatory behaviour’.

13 The two other varieties of the cognitive influence of institutions are the informational and the practical ones (Dequech 2013a).

14 One could add a third issue, namely, ideology.

Additional information

Funding

This research was funded by the National Research Council (CNPq), grant 311458/2018-1, and the São Paulo Research Foundation (FAPESP), grant 2015/11822-7.