Power, ideas and culture in the ‘longue durée’ of institutional evolution: theory and application on the revolutions of property rights in Russia

Abstract

North et al. (2009) have presented a new theory of economic institutions which explains property rights in ‘limited access orders’ as outcome of intra-elite political conflict. Property rights are explained as a means of governing violence in society via the distribution of rents among elites. However, this theory does not establish systematic linkages to North’s earlier theoretical contributions on the role of informal institutions and cognition in explaining institutions. I suggest that a synthesis can be built by referring to central notions in Foucault’s work on power, the state, and knowledge, especially, the concepts of biopolitics and of governmentality as a pattern of informal institutions. The paper sketches this synthesis and applies the theory on the evolution of property rights in Russia from Catherine the Great to Putin.