4 - The Constitution of the Economy

Summary

The notion of ‘constitution’ refers to the fundamental architecture of a polity considered as an organised collective structure encompassing multiple levels of agency and a variety of plural institutions beyond the state. A given constitution of the economy provides a set of conditions determining which patterns of division of labour are feasible under the existing structure of the polity, and which ones are not. This chapter outlines a framework for analysing the economic constitution in terms of the relatively invariant constellation of dispositions and interests characterising the existing polity. A given economic constitution is consistent with a limited range of variation of the division of labour and group affiliations, while more radical changes might take the economy away from the existing constitutional arrangement. On that basis the chapter also conceptualises the ‘economic body’ as the pattern of organised complexity arising from the relative positions and feasible motions within the economy and characterising the economic constitution of the polity. Finally, the chapter explores the way in which alternative arrangements of social networks influence the response patterns of economic constitutions to factors of change and provides a heuristic for identifying feasible policy options and transformation trajectories under given circumstances.