Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-2plfb Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-27T15:14:17.326Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The competition and evolution of ideas in the public sphere: a new foundation for institutional theory

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 February 2018

BRENDAN MARKEY-TOWLER Open the ORCID record for BRENDAN MARKEY-TOWLER [Opens in a new window]
BRENDAN MARKEY-TOWLER*
Affiliation:
School of Economics, University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia
*
*Email: [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This paper advances and defends the proposition that the basis for the evolution of institutions is the evolution and competition of ideas in the public sphere. This is based on a deeper proposition that institutions are ideas and ideas become institutions. We draw on the ‘Brisbane School’ of evolutionary/institutional economics and of behavioural/psychological economics to investigate the microdynamics of the competition of ideas in the public sphere, which has been studied at a macroscopic level by Isabel Almudi, Francisco Fatas-Villafranca and Jason Potts. The theory we develop gives us a new vision of institutional evolution as emerging from the microdynamics of the evolution and competition of ideas in the public sphere, and a new foundation for institutional theory. It gives us a new vision of the microdynamics of institutional evolution, the evolutionary fitness of ideas for competition in the public sphere and the likely path of institutional evolution.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of Institutional Economics , Volume 15 , Issue 1 , February 2019 , pp. 27 - 48
Copyright
Copyright © Millennium Economics Ltd 2018 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Almudi, I., Fatas-Villafranca, F., Izquierdo, L. and Potts, J. (2017a), ‘The Economics of Utopia: A Coevolutionary Model of Ideas, Citizenship and Socio-political Change’, Journal of Evolutionary Economics, doi: 10.1007/s00191-017-0507-7.Google Scholar
Almudi, I., Fatas-Villafranca, F. and Potts, J. (2017b), ‘Utopia Competition: A New Approach to the Micro-foundations of Sustainability Transitions’, Journal of Bioeconomics, 19 (1): 165–85.Google Scholar
Ayres, C. (1944), The Theory of Economic Progress, Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press.Google Scholar
Ayres, C. (1953), ‘The Role of Technology in Economic Theory’, American Economic Review, 43 (2): 279–87.Google Scholar
Beinhocker, E. (2011), ‘Evolution as Computation: Integrating Self-organization with Generalized Darwinism’, Journal of Institutional Economics, 7 (3): 393–423.Google Scholar
Boulding, K. (1961), The Image, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press.Google Scholar
Coase, R. (1937), ‘The Nature of the Firm’, Economica (new series), 4 (6): 386–405.Google Scholar
Coase, R. (1984), ‘The New Institutional Economics’, Journal of Institutional and Theoretical Economics, 140: 229–31.Google Scholar
Commons, J. (1924), Legal Foundations of Capitalism, New York: Macmillan Company.Google Scholar
Commons, J. (1931), Institutional Economics. American Economic Review, 21 (4): 648–57.Google Scholar
Commons, J. (1934), Institutional Economics, New York: Macmillan.Google Scholar
Dawkins, R. (1976), The Selfish Gene, Oxford: Oxford Univeristy Press.Google Scholar
Dewey, J. (1910), How We Think, Lexington: D.C. Heath.Google Scholar
Dopfer, K. (2004), ‘The Economic Agent as Rule Marker and Rule User: Homo Sapiens Oeconomicus’, Journal of Evolutionary Economics, 14 (2): 177–95.Google Scholar
Dopfer, K. (2012), ‘The Origins of Meso Economics: Schumpeter's Legacy and Beyond’, Journal of Evolutionary Economics, 22 (1): 133–60.Google Scholar
Dopfer, K., Foster, J. and Potts, J. (2004), ‘Micro-meso-macro’, Journal of Evolutionary Economics, 14 (3): 263–79.Google Scholar
Dopfer, K. and Potts, J. (2008), The General Theory of Economic Evolution, London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Earl, P. (1983), The Economic Imagination, Brighton: Wheatsheaf.Google Scholar
Earl, P. (1986a), ‘A Behavioural Analysis of Demand Elasticities’, Journal of Economic Studies, 13 (3): 20–37.Google Scholar
Earl, P. (1986b), Lifestyle Economics, Brighton: Harvester Wheatsheaf.Google Scholar
Earl, P. (1990), ‘Economics and Psychology: A Survey’, Economic Journal, 100 (402): 718–55.Google Scholar
Earl, P. (1992), ‘The Complementarity of Economic Applications of Cognitive Dissonance Theory and Personal Construct Psychology’, chapter in New Directions in Economic Psychology (revised version, September 2010), Aldershot: Edward Elgar.Google Scholar
Earl, P. (2010), ‘The Sensory Order, the Economic Imagination and the Tacit Dimension’, chapter in The Social Science of Hayek's ‘The Sensory Order ’, Bingley, UK: Emerald Publishing Group, pp. 211–36.Google Scholar
Earl, P. (2013), ‘Satisficing and Cognition’, chapter in Hayek and Behavioural Economics, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 278–300.Google Scholar
Earl, P. (2017), ‘Lifestyle Changes and the Lifestyle Selection Process’, Journal of Bioeconomics, 19 (1): 97–114.Google Scholar
Earl, P. and Potts, J. (2004), ‘The Market for Preferences’, Cambridge Journal of Economics, 28 (4): 619–33.Google Scholar
Eldredge, N. and Gould, S. (1977), ‘Punctuated Equilibria: The Tempo and Mode of Evolution Reconsidered’, Paleobiology, 3: 115–51.Google Scholar
Elster, J. (2009), Reason and Rationality, Princeton: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Faulkner, P., Pratten, S. and Runde, J. (2017), ‘Cambridge Social Ontology: Clarification, Development and Deployment’, Cambridge Journal of Economics, 41 (5): 1265–77.Google Scholar
Festinger, L. (1957), A Theory of Cognitive Dissonance, Standford, CA: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Foster, J. (2006), ‘Why is Economics not a Complex Systems Science?’ Journal of Economic Issues, 40 (4): 1069–91.Google Scholar
Gans, J. (2016), The Disruption Dilemma, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Georgescu-Roegen, N. (1971), The Entropy Law and the Economic Process, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Habermas, J. (1962), The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere, Polity, Cambridge.Google Scholar
Hamilton, W. (1919), ‘The Institutional Approach to Economic Theory’, American Economic Review, 9 (1): 309–18.Google Scholar
Harstad, R. and Selten, R. (2013), ‘Bounded-rationality Models: Tasks to Become Intellectually Competitive’, Journal of Economic Literature, 51 (2): 496–511.Google Scholar
Hartley, J. and Potts, J. (2014), ‘What is Cultural Science? (And what it is not)’, Journal of Cultural Science, 7 (1): 34–57.Google Scholar
Hayek, F. (1952), The Sensory Order, Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Hayek, F. (1988), The Fatal Conceit (Vol. 1 of The Collected Works of F. A. Hayek), Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Hodgson, G. (1998), ‘The Approach of Institutional Economics’, Journal of Economic Literature, 36 (1): 166–92.Google Scholar
Hodgson, G. (2004), The Evolution of Institutional Economics, London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Hodgson, G. (2010), ‘Choice, Habit and Evolution’, Journal of Evolutionary Economics, 20 (1), 1–18.Google Scholar
Hodgson, G. and Knudsen, T. (2010), Darwin's Conjecture, Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Hume, D. (1777), An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding (2nd edn), Cambridge: Hackett Publishing Company.Google Scholar
Jackson, M., Mandeville, T. and Potts, J. (2002), ‘The Evolution of the Digital Computation Industry’, Prometheus, 20 (4): 323–36.Google Scholar
Jehle, A. and Reny, P. (2011), Advanced Microeconomic Theory, London: Prentice Hall/Financial Times.Google Scholar
Kahneman, D. (2003), ‘Maps of Bounded Rationality: Psychology for Behavioural Economics’, American Economic Review, 93 (5): 1449–75.Google Scholar
Kandel, E., Schwartz, J., Jessell, T., Siegelbaum, S. and Hudspeth, A. (eds) (2013), Principles of Neural Science (5th Edition), McGraw-Hill, New York.Google Scholar
Kant, I. (1781), Critique of Pure Reason, London: Penguin.Google Scholar
Kelly, G. (1963), A Theory of Personality, Norton, New York.Google Scholar
Koestler, A. (1964), The Act of Creation, London: Pan Books.Google Scholar
Lawson, C. (2015a), ‘Order and Process in Institutionalist Thought: Commons and Ayres’, Cambridge Journal of Economics, 39: 1053–84.Google Scholar
Lawson, T. (2003), Re-orienting Economics, London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Lawson, T. (2009), ‘Cambridge Social Ontology: An Interview with Tony Lawson’, Erasmus Journal for Philosophy and Economics, 2 (1): 100–22.Google Scholar
Lawson, T. (2012), ‘Ontology and the Study of Social Reality: Emergence, Organisation, Community, Power, Social Relations, Corporations, Artefacts and Money’, Cambridge Journal of Economics, 36, 345–85.Google Scholar
Lawson, T. (2015b), ‘Comparing Conceptions of Social Ontology: Emergent Social Entities and/or Institutional Facts?’ Cambridge Working Papers in Economics, No. 1514.Google Scholar
Lawson, T. (2015c), ‘The Nature of the Firm and the Peculiarities of the Corporation’, Cambridge Journal of Economics, 39 (1): 1–32.Google Scholar
Lawson, T. (2015d), ‘Process, Order and Stability in Veblen’, Cambridge Journal of Economics, 39 (4): 993–1030.Google Scholar
Luijpen, W. (1969), Existential Phenomenology, Whitefish, MT: Literary Licensing.Google Scholar
Markey-Towler, B. (2016a), ‘Foundations for Economic Analysis: The Architecture of Socioeconomic Complexity’, PhD thesis, School of Economics, The University of Queensland, available at URL: https://doi.org/10.14264/uql.2017.91 (accessed 28 January 2018).Google Scholar
Markey-Towler, B. (2016b), ‘Law of the Jungle: Firm Survival and Price Dynamics in Evolutionary Markets’, Journal of Evolutionary Economics, 26 (3): 655–96.Google Scholar
Markey-Towler, B. (2017a), ‘Economic Dark Matter: On the Theory of Substitutability’, available at SSRN: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2971744 (accessed 25 January 2018).Google Scholar
Markey-Towler, B. (2017b), ‘On Changing Behaviour in Fixed Psychologies: An Integrated, Holistic, Systematic Approach’, available at SSRN: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2919165 (accessed 25 January 2018).Google Scholar
Mas-Collel, A., Winston, M. and Green, J. (1995), Microeconomic Theory, Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Merleau-Ponty, M. (1945), Phenomenology of Perception, London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Merleau-Ponty, M. (1948), The World of Perception, London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Metcalfe, J. (1998), Evolutionary Economics and Creative Destruction, London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Metcalfe, J. (2008), ‘Accounting for Economic Evolution: Fitness and the Population Method’, Journal of Bioeconomics, 10 (1): 23–49.Google Scholar
Mitchell, W. (1913), Business Cycles, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Mueller, J. (2017), Creative Change, New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.Google Scholar
Mueller, J., Melwani, S. and Goncalo, J. (2012), ‘The Bias against Creativity: Why People Desire but Reject Creative Ideas’, Psychological Science, 23 (1): 13–7.Google Scholar
Nagel, T. (1974), ‘What is it Like to Be a Bat?’ Philosophical Review, 83 (4): 435–50.Google Scholar
Nelson, R. and Winter, S. (1982), An Evolutionary Theory of Economic Change, Cambridge, MA: Belknap Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Newman, J. (1870), An Essay in Aid of a Grammar of Assent, Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
North, D. (1990), Institutions, Institutional Change and Economic Performance, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
North, D. (1991), ‘Institutions’, Journal of Economic Perspectives, 5 (1): 97–112.Google Scholar
Olson, M. (1965), The Logic of Collective Action, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Ostrom, E. (1990), Governing the Commons, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Ostrom, E. (2000), ‘Collective Action and the Evolution of Social Norms’, Journal of Economic Perspectives, 14 (3): pp. 137–58.Google Scholar
Ostrom, E. and Basurto, X. (2011), ‘Crafting Analytical Tools to Study Institutional Change’, Journal of Institutional Economics, 7 (3): 317–43.Google Scholar
Page, K. and Nowak, M. (2002), ‘Unifying Evolutionary Dynamics’, Journal of Theoretical Biology, 219: 93–8.Google Scholar
Polanyi, M. (1958), Personal Knowledge, London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.Google Scholar
Price, G. (1970), ‘Selection and Covariance’, Nature, 227 (5257): 520–1.Google Scholar
Price, G. (1972a), ‘Extension of Covariance Selection Mathematics’, Annals of Human Genetics, 35, 485–90.Google Scholar
Price, G. (1972b), ‘Fisher's “Fundamental Theorem” Made Clear’, Annals of Human Genetics, 36: 129–40.Google Scholar
Raine, A., Foster, J. and Potts, J. (2006), ‘The New Entropy Law and the Economic Process’, Ecological Complexity, 3 (4): 354–60.Google Scholar
Rubinstein, A. (2006), Lecture Notes in Microeconomic Theory, Princeton: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Searle, J. (1997), The Mystery of Consciousness, New York: New York Review of Books.Google Scholar
Searle, J. (2010), Making the Social World, Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Sen, A. (2009), The Idea of Justice, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Shannon, C. (1948a), ‘A Mathematical Theory of Communication’, Bell System Technical Journal, 27 (3): 379–423.Google Scholar
Shannon, C. (1948b), ‘A Mathematical Theory of Communication’, Bell System Technical Journal, 27 (4): 623–66.Google Scholar
Simon, H. (1947), Administrative Behavior (4th Edition), New York: The Free Press.Google Scholar
Simon, H. (1955), ‘A Behavioural Model of Rational Choice’, Quarterly Journal of Economics, 69 (1): 99–118.Google Scholar
Simon, H. (1956), ‘Rational Choice and the Structure of the Environment’, Psychological Review, 63 (2): 129–38.Google Scholar
Simon, H. (1959), ‘Theories of Decision-making in Economics and Behavioural Science’, American Economic Review, 49 (3): 3.Google Scholar
Simon, H. (1967), ‘Motivation and Emotional Controls of Cognition’, Psychological Review, 74 (1), 29–39.Google Scholar
Simon, H. (1969), The Sciences of the Artificial, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Simon, H. (1976), ‘From Substantive to Procedural Rationality’, chapter in Method and Appraisal in Economics, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 129–48.Google Scholar
Simon, H. (1978a), ‘On How to Decide What to Do’, Bell Journal of Economics, 9 (2): 494–507.Google Scholar
Simon, H. (1978b), ‘Rationality as a Process and as Product of Thought’, American Economic Review, 68 (2): 1–16.Google Scholar
Veblen, T. (1898), ‘Why is Economics not an Evolutionary Science?’ Quarterly Journal of Economics, 12 (4): 373–97.Google Scholar
Veblen, T. (1899), The Theory of the Leisure Class, Oxford: Oxford University Press (Oxford World's Classics).Google Scholar
Veblen, T. (1904), The Theory of Business Enterprise, New York: Charles Scribners.Google Scholar
Veblen, T. (1914), The Instinct of Workmanship, and the State of the Industrial Arts, New York: Macmillan.Google Scholar
Vernon, M. (1962), The Psychology of Perception, London: Pelican.Google Scholar
Williamson, O. (1975), Markets and Hierarchies, New York: The Free Press.Google Scholar
Williamson, O. (1979), ‘Transaction-cost Economics: The Governance of Contract Relations’, Journal of Law and Economics, 22 (2): 233–61.Google Scholar
Williamson, O. (1985), The Economic Institutions of Capitalism, New York: The Free Press.Google Scholar
Williamson, O. (2002), ‘The Theory of the Firm as Governance Structure: From Choice to Contract’, Journal of Economic Perspectives, 16 (3): 171–95.Google Scholar
Winter, S. (2013), ‘Habit, Deliberation, and Action: Strengthening the Microfoundations of Routines and Capabilities’, Academy of Management Perspectives, 27 (2): 120–37.Google Scholar