123: Markets as Politics -- Neil Fligstein (Part 1)

Fligstein’s 1996 article, “Markets as politics: A political-cultural approach to market institutions,” was an important contribution to the field of economic sociology, countering the dominant neoclassical view of economics that failed to explain market behaviors in practice. He argued for an alternative paradigm – a “political-cultural” model that suggested that the formation of markets was part of “state building” and subjected to various social institutions that belonged to the state such as property rights and rules of exchange. A very provocative piece that bridges institution theory with theories of social action.