Sustainability and Change: Institutionalist Insights about Culture, Society, and Policy
Paper Session
Friday, Jan. 6, 2023 10:15 AM - 12:15 PM (CST)
- Chair: William Waller, Hobart and William Smith Colleges
Meaningful Climate-Change Mitigation Policy Requires Accurate Measurement: Analysis, Critique, and Recommended Changes of Equations for Reporting Greenhouse-Gas Emissions to EPA
Abstract
Officially, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) requires that institutional organizations (corporations, government entities, NGOs, universities, and so forth) report annually the amount of different greenhouse-gas (GHG) emissions generated by each institution. The institutions are to select and utilize various EPA equations for calculating various kinds of GHG emission data. That database is then available to plan for climate-change mitigation. Given the exemptions in EPA regulations, simplistic linear production functions expressed in the equations, failure to make the equations consistent with complex systems, and lack of concern for compliance and enforcement; the totals reported by EPA for carbon dioxide, methane, and the F gases are significantly understated. Although understated, that flawed database is being utilized by various levels of government in the United States for policy mitigation and utilized in negotiations with other countries. Thus, all the resulting plans to reduce GHG emissions significantly understate the amount that emissions need to be reduced in order to meet goals such as the goal of holding global warming to below 1.5 degrees Celsius compared to pre-industrial levels. Since policy requires accurate measurement, especially climate-change policy, this paper deals with three areas of concern: (a) the kind and description of the production functions contained in EPA’s equations; (b) the lack of auditing and enforcement compliance; (c) the lack of complex systems methodology and methods. The lack of complex systems modeling that integrates social, economic, and ecological subsystems hampers the ability for government to conduct mitigation policy that coordinates climate-change programs across various systems and subsystems—often referred to as polycentric governance. Concepts from institutional economics can help address these problem areas.The Instrumentality of Ceremonial Habits of Thought
Abstract
This article problematizes the Veblenian Dichotomy, highlighting the instrumental aspects of ceremonial habits of thought. The Veblenian Dichotomy has become a key tool of analysis among institutionalist economists, but devolves into a dualism, when used to define progress. This is evident in the identification of progress with increasing instrumental value, implying ceremonial institutions are antithetical to progress. This led to a debate among Institutionalists in the 1980 and 1990s, between those following in the tradition of Clarence Ayres, identifying progress with a universal social value principle, and those asserting ceremonial institutions as more than “imbecile”: the Wendell Gordon-Anne Mayhew camp. This debate never reached a conclusion, yet a large literature emerged animated by the ideas stemming from the former group, with little work expanding on the arguments of the latter. This article reopens these debates, building off of the arguments of the Gordon-Mayhew side. It is asserted that using the dichotomy in defining progress turns it into a dualism antithetical to evolutionary analysis. Furthermore, it inhibits our ability to complexly analyze ceremonial habits of thought, not allowing us to recognize their inherently instrumental aspects. This problematizes the dichotomy itself. In light of these arguments, the role of the academic as myth debunker is asserted as a way forward.Nature, Exploitation and Institutions: On the Political Ecology of Thorstein Veblen and Karl Polanyi
Abstract
Thorstein Veblen’s economics is recognized for a radical understanding of contemporary industrial society. Free from neoclassical taxonomic and ceremonial tendencies, Veblen’s institutionalism offers a holistic perspective founded on a historical and anthropological account of power, status, exploitation, and the role of institutions in stratified societies. Within the Veblenian framework, the vested interests of industrial society establish an ideological separation between human beings and nature. In this sense, the relationship between humans and the natural environment becomes an extension of the exploitative relations among humans in a stratified society structured on exploitative institutions that emerged in the barbaric past. Another prominent institutionalist thinker, Karl Polanyi, posits a similar perspective on the relationship between the natural environment and industrial society. According to Polanyi, in the first third of the XIXth century, the unrestrained growth of the autoregulated market was responsible for shaping all life within three fictitious commodities: labor, money and land. For Polanyi, industrial capitalism needed a new institutional framework to move forward with the machinery process, and the State provided this great transformation by force. As an exception in the history of humanity, labor (i.e., human beings as its bearers), money, and the natural environment became commodities by the deliberate action of the State by means of its policies. Like Veblen, Polanyi rejects neoclassical preconceptions and emphasizes that institutions mediate between humans and the natural environment. Moreover, according to Veblen and Polanyi, this mediation within a market society is destructive and tends to annihilate all livelihood. This paper seeks to offer a comparative framework between Veblen’s and Polanyi’s institutionalisms regarding the exploitative relationship between capitalist institutions and the natural environment. In this sense, we emphasize that despite some differences between their approaches, Polanyi and Veblen stand as radical thinkers that seek to re-embed nature within human life.The Paradox of Resilience and Efficiency
Abstract
The enormous global challenges we face today require resilience institutions. Literature on commons and ecological sciences has reflected on this in terms of institutional boundaries, diversity and buffers. Interestingly, several economists of the past had similar views although not always using the label of resilience. The paper argues that, although resilience in capitalism implies loss of efficiency, resilience in the community economy goes hand in hand with efficiency.What Is Heterodox Economics? Does It Have Future? A Comment on Hodgson’s Views
Abstract
The paper provides a discussion of Geoffrey Hodgson's views about the future of heterodox economics. It contrasts the definition Hodgson puts forward, and the criticism raised by some authors, with the view put forward in a previous paper by the author in a debate with other critics of the heterodoxy (David Colander, Rick Holt and Barkley Rosser). It suggests that Hodgson's definition is open to some of the criticisms that he raised against Tony Lawson and the late Fred Lee, and that his views on the future of heterodoxy are ultimately flawed as a result of his ill-defined notion of heterodoxy.JEL Classifications
- B5 - Current Heterodox Approaches
- Q5 - Environmental Economics