The Constitution of Political Economy: Polity, Society and the Commonweal

This book outlines a theory of political economy that moves beyond the boundaries of economics and politics defined as separate fields of investigation. We argue that the mutual embedding of the economic and political domains suggests a new definition of both domains in terms of multiple and interrelated levels of agency. As a result, the political domain is not limited to a purely ‘contractualist’ sphere of covenants and formal agreements but encompasses a ‘constitutionalist’ perspective: whereas the former considers how prior interests vie with one another through conflict or compromise, the latter shifts the emphasis to objectives subject to a systemic condition, which gives shape to the interests of different actors. Similarly, the economic domain is not reducible to the micro level of the individual household or the macro level of the sovereign state but is constituted by the relatively persistent relational patterns established at multiple levels of aggregation within a community of actors engaged in division of labour and exchange.

The theory of political economy developed in this book brings to light the fundamental architecture of the economic and political spheres, that is, the relatively invariant structures determining the ‘orderliness’ (constitutional identity) of either domain. Accordingly, politics cannot be equated with coercive power and the struggle for influence. Rather, the economic features of politics call attention to the complementarities, constraints and possibilities that shape both conflict and cooperation. Likewise, the economy cannot be conceived purely as a collection of rational and self-interested actors interacting with one under scarce resource constraints on individual opportunities and choices. Instead, the political features of the economy highlight systemic conditions that constrain and orient the division of labour and exchange in the polity if material and social resilience is to be achieved.