Orthodoxy and heterodoxy in analyzing institutions

Abstract

The rediscovery and analytical reconstitution are present tendencies in much of social science, especially economics and sociology. The emergence and expansion of the so‐called new institutional economics exemplify these tendencies as do attempts at revival and rehabilitation of the old institutional economics. Analogous tendencies have been manifested in sociology by the further development of economic sociology, especially by various reformulations of its classical premise of institutional structuration and embeddedness of economic behavior. Nevertheless, much of mainstream economics tends to neglect or play down certain salient divergences between the latter's neoclassical or orthodox institutionalism, and heterodox or critical institutionalism advanced by the old institutional economics as well as by economic sociology. Identifies and elaborates such divergences between these seemingly homologous varieties of institutionalism. Since institutionalist varieties and tendencies in both economics and sociology are considered, represents a contribution to an interdisciplinary treatment of social institutions, a treatment originally proposed by the old institutional economics of Veblen et al., the German historical school as well as by Weberian‐Durkheimian classical economic sociology.

Similarities and Dissimilarities between Original Institutional Economics and New Institutional Economics

“…Jairo Parada (2002, 46) thinks that the deductive method of NIE-scholars is one of the main obstacles for reconciliation with OIE approaches. According to Milan Zafirovski (2003), NIE-scholars continue to embrace the focus on economic orthodoxy, contrary to OIE-scholars who state that institutions are not uniquely determined. Manuel Luz and Ramon Fernandez (2018, 597) elaborate some dissimilarities between North, who (2005, vii) very substantially extended NIE, and OIE-scholars, among which North's orientation on equilibrating dynamics and on technology that promotes growth through a process creative destruction and not through a process of institutional change.…”