Handbook on Institutions and Complexity

Reviews / Votes

'Extremely useful for unpacking the myriad connections between social disciplines and for understanding the dynamics of contemporary society by embracing its inherent complexity and nonlinearity.' -- I. Baglioli, European Review of Public Law 'This is a superb collection. No one reading this book can be left in any doubt that to recognise "institutions matter" is also to understand that what we mean by institutions is a complex entanglement of actors, norms and practices that cannot be reduced to any one dimension.' -- Mark Pennington, King's College London 'All social science involves the study of interactions, and interactions lead to complexity. In this pathbreaking, heterodox, and fascinating collection, the editors have brought together twenty highly original thinkers who show the astonishing multiple ways in which institutions and complex systems connect and how the study of complexity can enrich our understanding of societies and their institutions past and present.' -- Joel Mokyr, Northwestern University, USA 'The Handbook on Institutions and Complexity is a vital resource for any practitioner of modern political economy and social theory. Young scholars will have a hard time envisioning a time when the social sciences strove to develop an "institutionally antiseptic" theory of society. In response to this sterile vision of the social sciences, New Institutional Economics was developed and the powerful framework of analysis provided had wide acceptance in economics, politics and history. But translating the insights into the scientific strategy of modern social science often had the result for tractability of reasons of flattening the notion of institutions matter to its most simplistic rendering. The Handbook challenges that rendering and insists on the essential complexity of both the world we are trying to study and the theoretical framework we use to study that complex reality. The chapters inside this book represent foundational contributions to that effort.' -- Peter Boettke, George Mason University, USA