Cyril Hédoin's L'institutionnalisme historique et la relation entre théorie et histoire en économie [Historical institutionalism and the relation between theory and history in economics]. Paris: Classiques Garnier, 2013, 435 pp.

Abstract

Review of Cyril Hedoin's L'institutionnalisme historique et la relation entre theorie et histoire en economie [Historical institutionalism and the relation between theory and history in economics]. Paris: Classiques Garnier, 2013, 435 pp.This book originates from Cyril Hedoin's doctoral work on institutionalism in economic thought. It supplies extensive knowledge on the founding figures of institutional economics (Gustav von Schmoller, Max Weber, Thorstein Veblen, John R. Commons, and Karl Polanyi), which makes it a potential textbook on the subject, and it provides a detailed analysis of what defines an authentically institutionalist to economics (p. 9). Because economists can say we're all Institutionalists now (p. 7, emphasis in the original), the author reflects on the identity of what he and other French economists call historical institutionalism-a research programme that is distinct from (and critical of) mainstream economics and its method of analysing institutions. The adjective 'historical' not only refers to an approach that emphasizes the history of economic thought, but also suggests the specific criterion of demarcation used by Hedoin to identify the essence of this heterodox institutionalism. This approach recognizes the importance of the historicity of social phenomena and of social knowledge, and therefore investigates the relation between theory and history. This book also contributes to the history of ideas, the philosophy of economics, and the economics of institutions.By using two categories of Imre Lakatos's methodology of science, Hedoin proposes a rational reconstruction of the thought of Schmoller, Weber, Veblen, Commons, and Polanyi in order to delineate the hard core of the research programme of historical institutionalism. The choice to concentrate on these five authors (thus avoiding the reduction of historical institutionalism to American institutionalism) is based on their importance for this research programme: they are representative of its identity and offer significant insights that relate theory and history which, for the main part, are convergent and often complementary. Hedoin interprets these authors by analysing the logical connection between theory and history: specifically, this refers to the epistemological issue of historicization of theory (i.e., the method of social knowledge) and the substantive issue of theorization of history (i.e., the explanation of historical dynamics). The book is structured according to these mirror issues in order to analyse the primary methodological and theoretical principles that characterize historical institutionalism.Part one of the book develops what Hedoin identifies as the three principles underlying the historicization of theory: (1) consideration and treatment of the problem of historical specificity (this addresses the tension between the general and the particular); (2) adoption of methodological institutionalism (this addresses the tension between action and structure); and (3) appeal to abduction and ideal types as methods of knowledge (this addresses the tension between concept and reality). Hedoin begins with an exploration of the philosophical foundations of these principles which have their basis, according to him, in German neo-Kantian philosophy (Wilhelm Dilthey, Heinrich Rickert) and American pragmatist philosophy (Charles Sanders Peirce, John Dewey). Although there are differences between these philosophical traditions, they share a common emphasis on the historicity of science, which opposes the positivist epistemology that has dominated economics. Neo-Kantianism is, Hedoin states, the first philosophy to deal with the relation between theory and history; it addresses the specificity of the cultural sciences and aims to establish their scientific legitimacy. Pragmatism makes a decisive contribution (p. 63) by articulating connections between its theory of knowledge and its theory of action; these connections underlie all three principles for historicizing theory, especially in the social sciences. …