The Institution, the Economy and the Market: Karl Polanyi's Institutional Thought for Economists

Jerome Maucourant and Sebastien Plociniczak

Review of Political Economy, 2013, vol. 25, issue 3, 512-531

Abstract: This paper aims to clarify the logical structure of Karl Polanyi's concept of institution, especially with regard to his most important contribution to political economy--the conception of self-regulating markets as institutions. Although Polanyi did not provide a well-developed concept of institution, this article argues that such a concept exists in his work. Moreover, there is in Polanyi's work a sophisticated institutionalist account of the self-regulating market that has been largely overlooked as Polanyi does not present it explicitly. Analyzing the economy as an institutionalized process, as Polanyi does, reveals that the market is neither a natural nor a spontaneous phenomenon--a conclusion that runs counter to conventional economic thinking. Polanyi's approach enables us to view capitalism (the 'market society' in Polanyi's language) through a highly specific cultural fact: the fiction of the self-regulating market. This institutional perspective needs to be reassessed beyond new-institutionalist theoretical constructions.

Date: 2013
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DOI: 10.1080/09538259.2013.807675

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