Markets in historical contexts: ideas, practices and governance

Abstract

Chapter 1 Markets in Contexts: Ideas, Practices, and Governance* Mark Bevir and Frank Trentmann Social life requires coordination between individual actions. Coordination can arise intentionally or unintentionally and can take different forms. For much of the previous century, societies across the globe valorized two of forms of coordination – the market and state planning. All too often the market and the state appeared as polar opposites. Proponents of the market portrayed it as a natural and spontaneous form of order in which the free activities of individuals were coordinated for the public benefit by an invisible hand. Proponents of the state, meanwhile, portrayed hierarchical planning as a rational and just form of order in which humans took control of their own activity so as to overcome the irrationality and exploitation of unbridled capitalism. Today, in contrast, we witness increasing doubts not only about each of these visions, but also about the very dichotomy they seem to instantiate. Of course, there still remains a prominent – perhaps even a dominant – neo-liberal discourse that holds to an idealized vision of the market as a spontaneous coordinating mechanism that operates for the public good provided only that individuals are left to exchange freely with one another. Nonetheless, there is also a blossoming “new political economy” that points to the superficialities and blindspots of this idealized account of the market. The new political economy draws on transactional, institutional, and evolutionary economics to argue that all economic institutions, including markets, are necessarily established and transformed in the context of political, social, and cultural authorities. 1 All economies have to be governed through complex patterns of rule that connect and regulate economic actors, organizations, and interactions.