What is IPE (Institutional Political Economy)?
JUST IN A FEW WORDS:
... Institutional Political Economy (IPE)
is a term designed to embrace several set of theories,
analyses, and models
that come out from differentiated approaches but that also share
a minimum set of characteristics. Some of the said
characteristics relate to the approache adopted for building
those theories and are best emphasized by the
word Institutional. To adopt an institutionally oriented approach means to pay special
attention to the existing structures or sets of legal rules and social norms that
greatly, and in many ways, affect the human economic transactions under analysis. These institutional frameworks
may be taken into account as potential explanatory variables but also as
phenomena that being subject to marginal, sometimes revolutionary, change
also deserve explanatory and prescriptive analysis.
ANYTHING ELSE ?
... Yes. It can also be said that some other characteristics
of those analyses relate to the human phenomena under investigation and are
best depicted by the word Political.
To focus on political/collective decisions about economic affaires
(instead of focusing on individual/market transactions) means to mainly direct the
analysis to the arenas where voting for alternative actions is an ultimate
requirement in order to get a collective decision passed, and then implemented.
It must be said, however, that these collective aspects are also present
in the processes of deciding taking place inside those private organizations
that have both several stockholders and several organized groups of employees.
That makes the said research orientation also suitable here. Since influences
upon the behavior of others exist
in all directions, and since there are even many persons that actively
and simultaneously participate in market transactions, managerial activities,
and political decisions, an account of the existing interrelationships
is needed in order for a full picture of the phenomenon investigated to
be presented and evaluated.
So, through this page and its linkages you should at least become persuaded
of the significance of institutional arrangements for understanding
collective/political human
economic actions, and their consequences, including those oriented to change or
reform the existing sets of legal rules and social norms. You should also become more
inclined to endorse strategic, dynamic/evolutionary and democratic approaches
to political economy affaires than static, equilibrium, and technocratic
ones. Those objectives and principles, with some others, stand for my (Toboso's) research and teaching
tasks at the University of Valencia.
IPE first page
what is IPE? ||
IPE traditions ||
IPE associations-journals
IPE centers-courses ||
ICAPE-pluralism
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