Connecting Institutional Economics to Communitarian Philosophy: Beyond Market Institutions and Pecuniary Canons of Value

This article identifies the connections between original institutional economics and communitarian philosophy. For instance, both share the common emphasis on the cultural conditioning of human agency. Moreover, they present a common orientation to the human motives that surpass purely traditional economic considerations. We exemplify these correspondences with the similar explanations of the institutionalist Anne Mayhew and the communitarian political philosopher Michael Sandel to American farmer protests during the Gilded Age and Progressive Era. We conclude by suggesting a possible common research agenda for institutionalists and communitarians regarding the moral limits of markets and civic consequences of economic arrangements.