The article examines the contributions of John Dewey’s philosophical thought to an institutionalist conception that integrates the dynamics of emotions to enrich the conception of action and the analysis of the links between institutions and individuals. We first demonstrate the close connections between the enactivist approach underlying the post-Northian cognitive analysis of institutions and John Dewey’s situational approach. We then identify the main features and functions of emotions in the pragmatist’s theory. Subsequently, we outline three levels – emotional rationality, communication, and collective emotions – that illustrate how the incorporation of emotions enriches the study of institutions, drawing on North’s cognitive model. Finally, we illustrate the scope of Dewey’s theory of emotions through a concrete case (the France Télécom case), in which emotions serve as a driving force for actors’ creativity, changes in managerial practices, and a transformation of legal norms.

This paper examines the core features of Masahiko Aoki’s comparative institutional analysis (CIA), focusing on its methodology and institutional conceptualization. Aoki’s CIA integrates institutional and policy theory with comparative and historical analysis to explain institutional diversity and co-evolution. Departing from market-centric models, it emphasizes interdependencies among corporations, government, and society, as well as the roles of public representations and shared beliefs. Drawing on Aoki’s English and Japanese works, the paper situates CIA within his intellectual history and offers a preliminary comparison with the institutional theories of Ronald Coase, Douglass North, and Oliver Williamson. It also outlines five areas for future research, including the landscape of institutional economics, firm and corporate institutions, tech monopolies, Japan’s institutional transition and dynamic capabilities, and the co-evolution of human nature and institutions. Nearly a decade after Aoki’s passing, the paper argues that CIA remains essential for advancing institutional economics in today’s complex global landscape.

The canonical reading of Jaurès’s L’Armée nouvelle presents this work as an outdated reflection on the establishment of a socialist society supervised by intermediary bodies whose military training would be a major asset. Our reading goes beyond this historically situated approach to Jaurès’s book. We show that The New Army is not just a response to the General Staff, even less a ‘theorisation’ of the transition to socialism, but that its aim is to rehabilitate the founding principles of democratic institutions (ancient and modern), which rest on the constitution of an army of citizens: The ‘proletarian-soldier’ of Jaurès is none other than the ‘farmer-soldier’ of the ancient city and of Year 2 of the French Revolutionary calendar, transposed to the Industrial Age. Relying on a game-theoretical model, we highlight that this defence of democratic institutions is backed by a discourse of the economics of war prevention in terms of self-protection.

This paper concentrates on informal practices, which refer to transactions occurring outside formal institutions and regulations. Bribery fits this definition as it involves the exchange of money or favours outside legal channels to gain an advantage or influence decisions. We analyse bribery in five sectors (education, judiciary, medical, police, and permit) between 2003 and 2013 using the Global Corruption Barometer survey. Multinomial logistic and logit regressions verify that in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), people bribe the authorities more than in the rest of the world, while the magnitude depends on the model. The results are robust with fixed effects and propensity score matching regressions. This paper proposes that higher bribing rates in the MENA region can be explained by informal practices such as wasta, hamula, and combina—the channels that undergird transactions. The article concludes with policy implications to alleviate the impacts of bribery in the MENA region.

The American K12 education system has long been seen as centralized and rigid. The 1990s saw the emergence of several changes, which arguably pushed it in a potentially more polycentric, localized direction. Many school choice policies have developed since then, and a large amount of research has been conducted on these trends in American education since 1991. Just prior to these changes, in 1991, Davis and Ostrom published ‘A Public Economy Approach to Education: Choice and Co-Production’. That work sought to examine the extent of co-production in American schools to that time, and the extent to which the system was polycentric. This paper seeks to use Davis & Ostrom’s framing and to update their work in the current context. U.S. education policy has generally become more decentralized during this time, but not consistently. This paper also finds that U.S. education policy and practice has in fact developed along several of the lines Davis & Ostrom predicted.