Abstract
In the previous chapter, I argued for deliberative democracy as a suitable conceptual construct of the political sphere in order to deal with the problem of sustainability. The normative ideal of a deliberative democracy embroiders on a distinction between economic and political actions. It presumes a typically economic (i.e., instrumental) and a typically political (i.e., communicative) rationality, typically economic and typically political products (i.e., commodities and institutions respectively), and typically economic and political decision units. In this chapter, on the contrary, I will reflect on a suitable conceptual construct of the economic sphere in order to deal with the problem of sustainability.
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References
prevalent habits of thought with respect to particular relations and particular functions of the individual and of the community (Veblen 1965, 190).
Consider how easy it would be to confuse dancing for fun at a party, dancing for rain in a religious ceremony, and dancing for money on the evidence of the dancing alone (Neale 1987, 1183).
conform to R. A convention is a structured set of expectations about behavior, and of actual behavior, driven by shared and dominant preferences for the ultimate outcome as opposed to the means by which that outcome is achieved (Bromley 1989, 42).
An entitlement is a socially recognized and sanctioned set of expectations on the part of everyone in a society with regard to de jure or de facto legal relations that define the choice sets of individuals with respect to the choice sets of others (Bromley 1989, 42).
combination in which no one would have been better off had any one agent alone acted otherwise, either himself or someone else (Lewis cited in Bromley 1989, 41).
physical manifestation of a set of “working rules for going concerns” (Bromley 1985, 786).
John R. Commons initiated the term (Bromley 1989, 43).
The preferences of the prisoners are invariant across the two games: they wish to minimize their respective sentences. The preferences of the prosecuting attorney can certainly be assumed to be concerned with solving crimes in both instances. The difference in the outcome of the two games has nothing to do with preferences and everything to do with choices; it is the institutional structure that defines the environment of choice - or what I have already termed choice sets. Choices are made from the pertinent choice set, and those choices will vary even with the same underlying preferences (Bromley 1989, 87 ).
With thanks to Paul Thompson for referring me to Schmid’s work.
This idea can also be found in Schmid (1987, 39–43).
tlhe institutional arrangement is probably the closest counterpart to the most widely used definition of the term institution (DavisNorth 1970, 133).
North, as cited by Bromley, defines an institutional arrangement as an arrangement between economic units. 1 made his definition more general and sharp by omitting the adjective “economic”, and specifying that the units meant are decision units.
Bromley calls the problem of ‘overlapping but not coincident opportunity sets’ or of ’incongruent institutional structures’ a problem of ’institutional dissonance’ (Bromley 1985, 790). Institutional dissonance is, in his view, a reason for non-compliance.
I interpret Ramazotti’s term “field of action” in the same way as I interpret Neale’s concept “ relevant context”.
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© 2001 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht
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Deblonde, M. (2001). The Institutional and Ecological Dimension of an Economy. In: Economics as a Political Muse. The International Library of Environmental, Agricultural and Food Ethics, vol 2. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-015-9767-8_3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-015-9767-8_3
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