From New Institutional Economics of the Commons to the Common as a Mode of Production

2019 ◽  
Vol 118 (4) ◽  
pp. 767-787
Author(s):  
Alfonso Giuliani ◽  
Carlo Vercellone

The vitality of the new field of study on the commons crosses the entire field of social sciences, and it is analyzed from very different perspectives. On the one side, the Ostromian new Institutional economics uses the term commons as plural and seeks to give an account of the variety of the institutional forms of economic regulation. On the other, some new approaches interpret commons as an element of subversion of capitalism. These authors insist on the use of the concept as singular and they interpret it as a general principle of reorganization of economy and society. This article aims at analyzing the meanings of common and commons at stake in this debate. After a critical assessment of Elinor Ostrom’s contribution, the analysis will focus on the presentation of the theories of common as singular, distinguishing two currents of thought: the political conception of Dardot and Laval and the neo-workerist thesis of common as mode of production.

2019 ◽  
Vol 37 (3) ◽  
pp. 31
Author(s):  
Raquel Fernández González ◽  
Marcos Íñigo Pérez Pérez

The return of institutions to the main research agenda has highlighted the importance of rules in economic analysis. The New Institutional Economics has allowed a better understanding of the case studies that concern different areas of knowledge, also the one concerning the management of natural resources. In this article, the institutional analysis focuses on the maritime domain, where two large civil liability regimes for pollution coexist (OPA 90-IMO), each in a different geographical area (United States - Europe). Therefore, a comparative analysis is made between the two large regimes of civil responsibility assignment applying them to the Prestige catastrophe. In this way, the allocation and distribution of responsibilities in the investigation and subsequent judicial process of the Prestige is compared with an alternative scenario in which the applicable compensation instruments are governed by the provisions of the Oil Polution Act of 1990 (OPA 90), in order to establish a rigorous analysis on the effects that the different norms can have in the same scenario. In the comparative established in the case of the Prestige, where the responsibilities were solved very slowly in a judicial process with high transaction costs, the application of rules governed by the OPA 90 would not count with such a high degree of imperfection. This is so, since by applying the preponderance of the evidence existing in OPA 90 there would be no mitigation for the presumed culprits. On the other hand, the agents involved in the sinking would not be limited only to the owner, but also that operators or shipowners would be responsible as well. In addition, the amount of compensation would increase when counting in the damage count the personal damages, the taxes without perceiving and the ecological damage caused in a broad sense, damages not computable in the IMO.


Author(s):  
Ute Schmiel ◽  
Hendrik Sander

AbstractSince market economies are the dominant form of regulating economic action all over the world, the question arises how markets are conceived theoretically. Answering this is relevant because we need to know how existing and hypothetical markets work in general, what they “can do”, and how one can improve the market order. There are three different market approaches that consider genuine uncertainty. According to the new institutional economics approach, markets are institutions that increase boundedly rational actors’ utility. The markets-as-institutional-arrangements approach denies that markets maximize or minimize market outcomes and argues that they enable harmony between individual and common interests. According to the political-cultural approach, markets are political arenas with conflicts between the relevant actors. Deciding reasonably for a theory requires answering whether one theory is more adequate than another. Since literature has not answered this so far, the present paper deals with this issue from a critical-rationalist perspective. It finds that the institutional economics approach is not adequate because its assumptions contradict reality and each other. In contrast, the markets-as-institutional-arrangements approach and the political-cultural approach fulfill critical-rationalist requirements. Therefore, the paper compares them and finds that there are reasons to prefer the political-cultural approach and to interpret the markets-as-institutional-arrangements approach as its special case. Referring to the political-cultural approach has different consequences for analyzing and improving the market order. Taking a political-cultural view implies, e.g., not only focusing on desirable social values and market rules but also on the relevance of interpretative frameworks and power.


2021 ◽  
Vol 2021 (2) ◽  
pp. 163-191
Author(s):  
Cornelia Kühn

The article analyzes the development of new post-capitalist practices with their possible effects on the transformation of self-images and self-conceptions using the example of the economy for the common good. To this end, the connection between the current subject order, the present social crises and the complex entanglement of the prevailing mode of production and life is explained. A socio-ecological transformation would therefore also have to be linked to the emergence of an alternative subject culture which is oriented towards cooperation and community. The Association of Common Good Economy (Verein der Gemeinwohl-Oekonomie) and common good-oriented companies are used in this research as a space to observe social-cultural practices and new forms and conventions of cooperation in their acceptance and dissemination. On the one hand, it shows that these companies, with their values based on cooperation, social and global justice and ecological responsibility, and with their participatory organizational structures, offer opportunities for countercultural practices and make utopias tangible, so that social change and self-change are being made possible on a small scale. On the other hand, by means of detailed examples the inconsistencies of social-cultural practices and the hybrid mixture of subject forms become clear and comprehensible in their specific context.


Author(s):  
Ilke Civelekoglu ◽  
Basak Ozoral

In an attempt to discuss neoliberalism with a reference to new institutional economics, this chapter problematizes the role of formal institutions in the neoliberal age by focusing on a specific type of formal institution, namely property rights in developing countries. New institutional economics (NIE) argues that secure property rights are important as they guarantee investments and thus, promote economic growth. This chapter discusses why the protection of property rights is weak and ineffective in certain developing countries despite their endorsement of neoliberalism by shedding light on the link between the institutional structure of the state and neoliberalism in the developing world. With the political economy perspective, the chapter aims to build a bridge between NIE and political economy, and thereby providing fertile ground for the advancement of NIE.


2009 ◽  
Vol 42 (03) ◽  
pp. 616-618
Author(s):  
Diego Mazzoccone ◽  
Mariano Mosquera ◽  
Silvana Espejo ◽  
Mariana Fancio ◽  
Gabriela Gonzalez ◽  
...  

It is very difficult to date the birth of political science in Argentina. Unlike other discipline of the social sciences, in Argentina the first distinction can be made between political thought on the one hand, and political science in another. The debate over political thought—as the reflection of different political questions—emerged in our country in the nineteenth century, especially during the process of constructing the Argentine nation-state. Conversely, political science is defined in a general way as the application of the scientific method to the studies on the power of the state (Fernández 2001).


1990 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 113-118
Author(s):  
Eric A. Winkel

We are at a crossroads where the time is ripe for the emerging Muslim thought to once again set the standard for universal participation and debate. My continual argument with Mona Abul-Fadl's concept of kairos in The American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences, Vol. 6, No. 1, (September 1989 supplement) is whether the openness of the discourse realm is a result of what Gai Eaton describes as the process of decomposition releasing explosive gases, where the "ripeness" is putridity, or a beneficial progress of ideas. Does postmodern deconstruction, decentralization, and destruction create a foothold for the remembering of Islam? Or will the Islamic discourse enter the scene to be trivialized and relativized in the encounter? From my perspective, I tie the movements of the paradigms to the political encounter with the other, where the self-described American establishment was forced to recognize the non-white, the non-male, the non-consumer. More sensitive to complexities, calmer in her approach, and without any reductionism or oversimplification, Mona Abul-Fadl recognizes the "mundane" links of ideas, but treats them with respect nevertheless. It is her insight to see in the tanzil, in the physical and already interpreted descent of the Qur'an and Sunnah, the one rope on which we may spin, in shaa Allah, the Islamic discourse for it to achieve grounding and affirmation in a world of chaos and alienation. We are in a time when a metacritique may now become possible, where the crisis in Western thought coincides with a dawning epistemic consciousness among Muslims. "We are living," she notes, "at the threshold of a critical era which is steadily being acknowledged as such. The designation 'post­modernity' indicates the direction of the transition away from the established canon of values and beliefs identified with the European Enlightenment." ...


2020 ◽  
Vol 4 ◽  
Author(s):  
Véronique De Herde ◽  
Philippe V. Baret ◽  
Kevin Maréchal

Drawing on an analysis of the Walloon dairy sector, this paper aims at bringing novel insights on the coexistence issue in agrifood transition studies. Whereas most studies explore the coexistence of farm models, our study focuses on value chains, in particular on cooperatives. In the Walloon Region, new dairy cooperatives emerged, as substitute or as complement to the incumbent vertically integrated dairy cooperatives. This paper focuses on the coexistence of dairy cooperative models as enabler of transition toward product diversification. Dairy cooperatives are hybrid actors: economic agents on the market on the one hand, structure of collective agency on the other hand. Williamson's framework of New Institutional Economics acknowledges that the allocation of resources by cooperatives depends on governance processes and on the wider institutional context in which the cooperatives evolve. Within the broader frame of the Multi-Level Perspective, this approach allows to consider the socio-technical coherence in which the cooperatives evolve, the effects of this coherence on their pathways of development, and the complementarity of the cooperative models. This qualitative analysis builds on semi-directed interviews with actors of the Walloon dairy sector. The results outline distinctions between the new cooperative models and mainstream dairy cooperatives in market approach, definition of milk quality, distribution of added value, governance, and interactions with partners. Both models evolve within a distinct socio-technical coherence, holding, in the case of the mainstream dairy cooperatives, lock-ins to diversification related to the relationship with the farmer-members and the milk they produce in the industrial vertically integrated model. The new cooperative models circumvent these lock-ins through de-integration and externalization of initiatives, remuneration, and risk. They allow specific groups of actors—still related or unrelated to the mainstream dairy cooperative—to explore new market pathways in accordance with their potential, and to mutually agree on criteria qualifying milk. This research draws the picture of a possible reconfiguration of the dairy landscape toward a more diversified ecosystem of actors and invites to consider structures of governance in collective action as a cornerstone issue, because of their significant role in terms of enablement, coexistence, and complementarity throughout the transition process.


2021 ◽  
Vol 42 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Vlasta Jalušič

Reinhard Koselleck has long been regarded as a particularly eminent theorist of socio-political concepts, while Hannah Arendt had not been in focus as a conceptual author until recent times. This article explores the common thinking space between Arendt and Koselleck through their thesis about the gap, rupture, crisis, or break in the tradition of political thinking and historical periods and how this is linked to their notion of conceptuality, i.e. Begreifen (understanding). Despite the impression that each of them focused on the one main break between the past and the future, Arendt and Koselleck both studied multiple breaks and crises in the Western political tradition. The article attempts to show how their distinctive thinking and rethinking of political concepts (Begreifen) are related to these breaks through several direct and indirect encounters and how these are both close and apart at the same time. While they have different concepts of politics and the political, their understanding of the breaks in time and crises can be read as complementary, especially considering their concern with returning the responsibility for actions and concepts to the human sphere.


Author(s):  
Charles L. Cohen

Connected by their mutual—if differentiated—veneration of the One God proclaimed by Abraham, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam compose a family of related traditions. The Abrahamic Religions: A Very Short Introduction explores their intertwined histories and the ways in which encounters among their adherents have helped construct their own independent religious identities from antiquity to the present. Those identities have not been fixed and static, but have rather reflected particular historical contexts. The political arrangements in which the religions emerged and intermingled—notably, their changing relationships to state power—have figured importantly in their development. The common heritages of the Abrahamic religions have both brought them together and divided them.


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