Civil Society Comes of Age in Economics: Governance Beyond Markets and States

A substantial shift in the focus of economic research over the last half century has largely gone unnamed and unnoticed. Using topic modelling on 27,436 research papers published in top economics journals since 1900, Carlin and Bowles document a trajectory from ‘state’ to ‘market’ topics and then, from 1970 towards ‘civil society’, including firms as organizations, families, neighborhood communities, trade unions, social movements and identity groups. In civil society, the primary mechanisms regulating economic interactions are neither governmental fiat nor complete contracts and market-determined prices but instead are hierarchies of private authority and power, social norms, group identity (including out-group hostility), and reputation. Carlin and Bowles characterize the comparative advantage of the three forms of governance and complementarities among them in addressing societal coordination problems.