Three Dimensions of Political Economy: Markets, Hierarchies and Kinships

Benacek, V. (2003). Three Dimensions of Political Economy: Markets, Hierarchies and Kinships. IIASA Interim Report. IIASA, Laxenburg, Austria: IR-03-054

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Abstract

The author challenges the dualistic view of social, political, and economic governance, where markets and hierarchies (i.e. the state and government are agents) dominated the theoretical fields. This is also a problem of new outlook of economics. A classification method of analyzing the "fundamental ways" in organizing and governing human societies is developed and the authentic building blocks for a "third way" policy-making are found in the interests of individuals and their micro-organizations. No instruments of socio-political governance can dissociate themselves from patterns of behavior where justice, solidarity, altruism, reciprocity, consensus, local networks, human capital or ethics play important roles. The demise of communism, the hardships of transition and the differences in the performance of capitalism can be explained by the particular involvement of the third social pillar into the working of state hierarchies and economic markets.

The interaction of markets, hierarchies and institutions of culture; of organizations and individuals; and interdependencies between the future and the past - all these phenomena call for wider "endogenisation" of theories explaining modern social order, for further integration of social sciences and for a more varied portfolio of choices offered by political parties.

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