Markets as Political Institutions

Economic sociology has convincingly shown markets to be structured by socially constructed sets of institutions, i.e. stabilized systems of rules, norms, and expectations (Hall and Taylor, 2009). Indeed, Neil Fligstein (2001) in particular has shown that markets would simply not exist in any durable form without the ‘architecture’ provided by these institutions. Notwithstanding the considerable contribution of this research tradition to knowledge about economies, to date its primary focus has not been upon precisely who produces these institutions, how, why and to what effect. More specifically, what forms of argumentation and which material or positional resources enable certain actors to dominate the making and implementation of these institutions? In short, how are markets and their institutions politically constructed