Original and New Institutional Economics: Brethren Rather Than Foes? Lessons from the Sociocognitive Turn in 'Late' Douglass North

摘要

A sociocognitive foundation for transformative agency requires much deeper exploration to adequately understand the causal origins of human interests, preferences, and choices as they shape both the emergence of institutions and the process of institutional change. In the collegial spirit of rapprochement, reminiscent of earlier efforts at bridge-building, our central contention is that the new institutional economics of late Douglass C. North (2005) provides such a sociocognitive approach, as well as an important ontological frame for dealing with embedded agency. This agency may afford original institutional economics a complementary meta-theoretical account of how institutions are formed and changed over time.