The Unconventional, but Conventionalist, Legacy of Lewis’s “Convention” (original) (raw)
Related papers
in Oleinik, Anton (ed.) The Institutional Economics of Russia’s Transformations, Aldershot (UK), Ashgate., 2005
The Economy of Conventions [EC] programme incorporates, in a new perspective, three issues that have been dissociated by a century and a half of economic thinking: the characterization of the agent and his/her reasons for acting; the modalities of the coordination of actions; and the role of values and common goods (for former discussions of the programme, see , Orléan, 1994, Salais, Thévenot, 1986. Standard theory was built on strict compartmentalization between the two issues of rationality and coordination that were axiomatized separately, the former by decision-making theory and the latter by general equilibrium theory (Favereau, 1997). These two issues were in turn isolated from the third, which concerns value judgments and normative considerations. In contrast, the frameworks of analysis that we have constructed propose an articulation between these three issues. If we agree that the coordination of human actions is problematical and not the result of laws of nature or constraints, we can understand that human rationality is above all interpretative and not only or immediately calculative. The agent first has to apply conventional frameworks to understand others" situations and actions before he/she can coordinate him/herself. This understanding is not only cognitive but also evaluative, with the form of evaluation determining the importance of what the agent grasps and takes into account. This is where we recognize the role, in coordination, of collective values and common goods that cannot be reduced to individual preferences but provide the framework for the most legitimate coordination conventions. This is also where language plays a part as a key component of institutions. EC aims for an integration that concerns the economic, social and political sciences equally. In this way, they should be brought closer together, rather than each one expanding separately at the expense of the others.
Conventions, Expectations and Rationality
The Southern Journal of Philosophy, 1987
Conventions play a large part in our lives. When we exchange money for goods, we d o so in conformity t o conventions. Our mode of dress and manner of eating is largely determined by convention. When we perform linguistically our actions are governed by conventions. The ubiquity of conventions suggests that a n analysis of the notion of a convention would have a n important place in the attempt t o understand social phenomena.
Rationality, Coordination, and Convention
Synthese, 1990
Philosophers using game-theoretical models of human interactions have, I argue, often overestimated what sheer rationality can achieve. (References are made to David Gauthier, David Lewis, and others.) In particular I argue that in coordination problems rational agents will not necessarily reach a unique outcome that is most preferred by all, nor a unique 'coordination equilibrium' (Lewis), nor a unique Nash equilibrium. Nor are things helped by the addition of a successful precedent, or by common knowledge of generally accepted personal principles. Commitments like those generated by agreements may be necessary for rational expectations to arise. Social conventions, construed as group principles (following the analysis in my book On Social Facts), would suffice for this task.
The Economics of Convention: From the Practice of Economics to the Economics of Practice
Historical Social Research, 2019
»Die Economics of convention: Von der Praxis der Ökonomie zur Ökonomie der Praktiken«. There would not have been an economics of convention (EC) without the use of the word "convention" in chapter 12 of the "The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money" (1936) by Keynes, and without the book "Convention. A Philosophical Study" (1969), by the philosopher and mathematician David Lewis. But representatives of EC reinterpret the usual reading of those two texts. They extract from the first one the idea of a convention as regulating a professional community (the financial one and the academic one in economics). As for the second one, they privilege the final revision of Lewis' initial game-theoretic definition, which puts non-observable "beliefs" on a par with observable "actions." The coherence between both elements can only be produced by the emergence of a "(social) practice." Therefore a very different practice of economics is promoted by EC (for instance reunifying coordination and reproduction). Following Foucault who studied states as a practice (through the notion of "governmentality"), we study business firms as a practice. Because of the gap between the legal person (corporation whose members are the shareholders) and the economic organization (with all its stake-holders), the firm as a practice needs to be regulated by a convention, in order to make the inequality not unbearable for workers. Otherwise the working of the firm as a dispositive of collective creation would be blocked. We conclude that conventions, practices, and dispositives belong to the same analytical space.
Journal of Economic Issues, 2005
This paper explores some interconnections between the "original," or "old," institutional economics (OIE hereafter) and the French economics of conventions (EC hereafter), with the aim of promoting a mutually beneficial cooperation between them. 1 Since its inception, 2 the EC has acquired a certain prominence in France, where it is one of the main approaches that develop an alternative to neoclassical economics, particularly regarding the study of institutions. The conventionalist approach is still not very well known in economic circles outside French-speaking countries, but its contributions are very interesting and deserve greater attention. 3 At a general level of discussion, one can identify some important points in common between the OIE and the EC. Both approaches emphasize the role of institutions and conventions as nonmarket factors that promote order and coordination in economic life. In part because of this, they see economics as a social science and are very open to contributions from other disciplines. Indeed, it is hard to think of other approaches in economics that are closer to several other social sciences. Some original institutionalists and conventionalists even go beyond interdisciplinarity and defend the unification of all social sciences. Also shared is the view that institutions and conventions have a mental dimension and a behavioral one. Another common characteristic is the emphasis on values and on normative evaluation. This paper compares the OIE and the EC at a more specific level, regarding two theoretical issues related to the conceptualization of institutions in the OIE and conventions in the EC: cognition and valuation. It also considers the temporality of the 465
Individual action, institutions, and social change An approach in terms of convention
This anthology consists of a collection of articles that address two common questions: how institutions emerge from individual actions and how individual actions are shaped by institutions? What unifies these contributions is the search of a theoretical explanation that overcomes the shortcomings of the rational choice explanations of social institutions. The approach developed here deals with two methodological problems that are pervasive in social sciences: that of the relationship between agency and structures and that of role of rationality and norms in explaining individual social behavior. Individuals are seen to be acting according to "conventions" that structure their interaction and that are cognitive and interpretative schemes that allow them to understand social reality and to give meaning to their actions. In addition individuals do not act either rationally or normatively but are conceived as acting within a "conventional" context that gives meaning to their action but also constrains them. They are supposed to be moved both by normative considerations and by self-interest that can conflict.
Historical Social Research Historische Sozialforschung, 2011
»Économie des conventions und die Geschichte von Ökonomien. Perspektiven für einen transdisziplinären Ansatz in der Wirtschaftsgeschichte.«. This introduction and the contributions of the HSR issue intend to develop and to demonstrate the potentialities of the economics of convention (EC) for a transdisciplinary approach to the history of economies. "Convention" has become a core concept in the renewal of French social sciences from structuralism towards pragmatism. Conventions are interpretative schemes for action and coordination that persons and actors use in situations under conditions of uncertainty. Through repeated interaction they become an intimate part of the history, incorporated into justifications, behaviours and social objects like institutions. In contrast to neoclassic economics and to new historical institutionalism, the EC starts from assumptions of a plurality of economic frameworks of action, of the socio-historical construction of concepts, categories, and data. It rejects dichotomies, adopts a broad conception of the economy, conceives institutional change as the change of the "conventional" foundations for the pragmatic use and interpretation of institutions. Its methodology is that of a "complex pragmatist situationalism", dedicated to a comprehensive approach aiming at reconstructing the internal going-on of historical processes. This special issue offers a set of contributions on: the origins of the approach, its methodological standpoint, its possible developments towards a sociology of engagement or hermeneutical concerns, several applications on economic history (notably about conventions of quality and of labor).