Contemporary Institutional and Evolutionary Concepts and Principles

This chapter scrutinizes some major contemporary concepts and principles of institutional and evolutionary political economy (IEPE) that are especially pertinent to this book. The first core general one is historical specificity and evolution, under the umbrella of which come numerous others, e.g., historical time, scientific realism, culture and institutions, phases and stages, social provisioning, blind drift, path dependence and stylized facts. The second core general one is hegemony and uneven development, which has under its wing the concepts of capitalist world-system, absolute and relative hegemony, hegemonic stability thesis, core/periphery/semi-periphery, production, commercial and financial dominance, and so forth. The third core one is heterogeneous groups and agents, and under its umbrella come others, e.g., agency and structure, gender, class, ethnicity, age, species, micro agents, and inequality of income, wealth and power. The fourth is circular and cumulative causation (CCC), along with interdependency, emergence, complexity, magnification, uneven development, aggregate demand, economic surplus, plus various feedbacks. The fifth is contradiction, which includes power and authority, the disembedded economy, vested interested v. common good, instrumental and ceremonial functions, plus a series of more specific contradictions. The sixth is uncertainty, with related ones such as the circuit of money capital, endogenous money, prevailing business climate, cycles-waves-crises, financial instability hypothesis, Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) and tipping points. The seventh is innovation, with the community’s joint stock of knowledge; creative destruction; information, skills and intelligence; new products, processes, materials, etc.; and others, under its umbrella. The eighth is policy and governance, which can be forms of innovation, encapsulating the promotion of social provisioning, quality of life, participatory democracy, functional finance, and so on under its umbrella. Throughout we highlight the main concepts and principles used to scrutinize the specific world problems examined in the chapters that follow.