Economics as a Political Economy? Theoretical and Policy Constraints on the Comprehension of Political Institutions by Mainstream Economics

The paper argues that it is impossible for current mainstream economics to fully integrate political institutions and mechanisms and therefore the various modalities of impacts of these political phenomena on economic processes and outcomes, as well as, symmetrically, the impact of economic processes on political phenomena. With reference to the perspective of the economics of development, the paper demonstrates this argument via two points: firstly a theoretical impossibility due to the inherent composite character non-quantifiability, instability and polysemy of institutional (political) concepts, and secondly, in terms of policy, the irrelevance of national political institutions for policies inspired by the neoclassical framework (notably its ‘Washington consensus’ variants)