Paradoxes of the Market Wars (original) (raw)

'Historicizing the Ideology of "the Market"', Competition & Change, 25 (2021), 5, 517-533.

Competition & Change, 2021

The concept of the market is a linchpin notion in the analysis of contemporary capitalism. This article seeks to question how the term has tended to oscillate between two problematic types of use: either underspecifying the history and politics tied to the concept or, conversely, overloading the notion with a proliferation of too many meanings and applications. As a way to chart an alternative approach which can objectify and critique some of these patterns, this paper re-excavates the notion of 'the market' through a historicization of its ideological production and consumption. In particular, the argument brings political economy scholarship into a conversation with theoretical advances in the analysis of ideology, notably Michael Freeden's so-called 'morphological approach'. The article illuminates not only past usage patterns but also how the potency of the expression has been refreshed within recent decades associated with neoliberalism. In this way, through a dissection of this master category, the article also aims to contribute to identifying more precisely what is new in the neoliberal ideological ecosystem.

How mythical markets mislead analysis: an institutionalist critique of market universalism

Socio-Economic Review, 2018

Market universalism refers to the non-metaphorical tendency to use the term market to describe a wide variety of arrangements or processes in the real world. Using institutional criteria, this paper establishes some minimal necessary features of a market, to show that some particular arrangements are not markets. For example, while mechanisms of competition and interaction are ubiquitous, ordinary conversation is not literally a ‘market for ideas’ and much of politics is not literally a ‘political market’. Markets are not and cannot be universal. Yet market universalism overlooks missing markets, the theory of which implies that we are in a world of second-best solutions and that markets are not necessarily the answer to every economic problem. Also, by reducing politics to a form of ‘market’ economics, market universalism downplays the distinctive, non-market nature of the political and legal spheres and corrodes the conceptual separation of civil society from the state.

Thinking Socially' about Markets

Journal of Australian Political Economy, 2011

For more than a century, the discipline of economics has been dominated by the neoclassical tradition of thought. This has bequeathed an understanding of markets as spheres of free exchange between autonomous, asocial individuals. Moreover, this understanding of markets is often reflected in mainstream public policy discourse. Yet the orthodox approach to understanding markets has proved inadequate for conceptualising the observed nature, practice and evolution of 'actually existing markets' (Chester 2010) in capitalist economies. As a result, it is contested on many fronts.

Introduction: the embeddedness of economic markets in economics

The laws of the markets, 1998

Even as the market seems triumphant everywhere and its laws progressively and ineluctably impose themselves worldwide, we cannot fail to be struck by the lasting topicality of the following wellknown quotation from D. North: 'It is a peculiar fact that the literature on economics ... contains so little discussion of the central institution that underlies neoclassical economics-the market' (North, 1977).) How can this surprising shortcoming be explained? How can this self-proclaimed failure of economic theory be accounted for? By distinguishing the thing from the concept which refers to it, the marketplace from the market, the English language suggests a possible answer. While the market denotes the abstract mechanisms whereby supply and demand confront each other and adjust themselves in search of a compromise, the marketplace is far closer to ordinary experience and refers to the place in which exchange occurs. This distinction is, moreover, merely a particular case of a more general opposition, which the English language, once again, has the merit of conveying accurately: that between economics and economy, between theoretical and practical activity, in short, between economics as a discipline and economy as a thing. If economic theory knows so little about the marketplace, is it not simply because in striving to abstract and generalize it has ended up becoming detached from its object? Thus, the weakness of market theory may well be explained by its lack of interest in the marketplace. To remedy this shortcoming, economics would need only to return to its object, the economy, from which it never should have strayed in the first place. The matter, however, is not so simple. The danger of abstraction and unrealism which is supposed to threaten every academic discipline-and which time and again has been exposed and stigmatized, This means that the agent is neither immersed in the network nor framed by it; in other words, the network does not serve as a context. Both agent and network are, in a sense, two sides of the same coin. Either one enters the network through the agents and one is immediately tempted to characterize them by the shape of their 8~The Editorial Board of The Sociological Review 1998

Markets as Mere Means

British Journal of Political Science, 2017

:There has been a remarkable shift in the relation between market and state responsibilities for public services like health care and education. While these services continue to be financed publicly, they are now often provided through the market. The main argument for this new institutional division of labor is economic: while (public) ends stay the same, (private) means are more efficient. Markets function as ‘mere means’ under the continued responsibility of the state. This paper investigates and rejects currently existing egalitarian liberal theories about this division of labor and it presents and defends a new theory of marketization, in which social rights and democratic decision-making occupy center-stage.

Conceptualising Markets (with Julian Gruin)

Centre for International Policy Studies, 2019

The rise of novel modes of governance, such as China’s authoritarian capitalism, is challenging commonly held assumptions about what markets are. See our blog post on why our conceptually impoverished definition of markets distorts contemporary debates on China and the Global Liberal Order, on the regulation of new markets or on how to design inclusive economic policy.