Political Economy and Its Future: Conceptual and Institutional Issues

This article begins by identifying different ways of conceptualizing political economy. In light of this conceptual discussion, it looks at political economy from an institutional perspective, in two different senses. First, paying special attention to the distinction between mainstream and nonmainstream in economics and in other disciplines, it considers the institutions of contemporary political economy, i.e., the rules of behaviour and of thought that are socially shared among one or more groups of academics involved with political economy. It argues that there are good institutional and intellectual reasons to strategically promote further interdisciplinary integration between various approaches in nonmainstream economics and in the mainstream of other disciplines. Second, the article examines institutions in political economy, i.e., institutions in the reality outside academia that are relevant for political economy. Institutional issues in political economy are highlighted here not only because they are relevant and ubiquitous outside academia, but also because they are especially promising as subject matters about which that much needed interdisciplinary integration of approaches in political economy can occur.