Merging Dugger’s Concepts with O’Hara’s Principles to Advance Social and Institutional Economics

The purpose of this paper is to situate, reconstruct, summarise and provide some research guidelines for advancing the scientific study of William M. Dugger’s concepts of social and institutional economics. We start by examining the nature of Dugger’s concepts and how we can dissect Dugger’s concepts with the aid of Phillip O’Hara’s principles. Then in the bulk of the paper we, firstly, contextualise these Duggerian concepts that have a direct bearing on the rule or principle of (A) Historical Specificity and the temporal dimensions of socioeconomic processes: including the concepts of realism; historical time; evolution; blind drift; plus the community’s joint stock of knowledge. Secondly, we scrutinise those concepts that link directly to the principle of (B) Circular and Cumulative Causation: concepts of interdependency, amplified dynamics, and virtuous and vicious cycles and uneven developments. Thirdly, we examine those Duggerian concepts that are associated with the principle of (C) Heterogeneous Groups and Agents: equality, gender, ethnicity, class, nationality and enabling myths. This is followed, fourthly, by a discussion of those concepts that link to the principle of (D) Contradictory Processes in the social and political economy: Dugger’s concepts of power; hegemony; vested interests versus the common good; instrumental and ceremonial functions of institutions; emulation and conspicuous consumption; plus vesting, entrenching and faking. Fifthly, the principle of (E) Ethics and Policy is correlated with the Duggerian concepts of social provisioning; participatory democracy; democratic planning; and abundance. A conclusion follows with some ideas for future research on these principles and concepts of social and institutional economics.