business of private sector consultancies has been boosted by the search for private
sector exemplars and by the wish to use consultancies as a means of introducing
‘‘businesslike’’ practices into hitherto standardized Weberian bureaucracies. One of
the most striking examples of this is provided by the huge health care sectors that
dominate all the national systems of Western Europe, where a paradigm shift away
from a public service model has led to the widespread creation of systems of
managed markets that attempt to mimic the relations between business institu-
tions in the market system (Saltman and von Otter 1992 ).
6 Conclusions: Politics, Markets, and
Agents
.........................................................................................................................................................................................
‘‘The subject matter of economics,’’ Schumpeter once wrote, ‘‘is essentially a
unique process in historic time’’ ( 1954 , 12 ). This uniqueness also lies at the heart
of all institutions, including economic institutions. A conclusion properly looks
back and forward: to sum up what we think we know, and to sketch what we need
to know more of:
. We know that the modern study of economic institutions resurrects many of the
concerns of an older institutionalism, but in very diVerent intellectual and
policy environments: intellectually, it is marked by more self-consciousness
and uncertainty about the meaning of ‘‘institution,’’ and about the processes
of institutional design; in policy, it is now inseparable from the landmark
changes of the last three decades, notably those usually summed up by
‘‘globalization.’’. We know that these features strikingly parallel the histories of ‘‘old’’ and ‘‘new’’
institutionalism in political science.. We know that institutionsmatter:that ensembles of organizations make a
diVerence to political outcomes (such as the viability of democracy) or to
economic outcomes (such as the character of market regulation or even the
wider fate of whole capitalist orders.)What we do not know is of course limitless, and we are caught in a familiar bind:
the most damaging and important areas of ignorance are those of which we are not
even aware. But the most important areas of ignorance about which we are highly
conscious, or should be highly conscious, are twofold:
. The connections between institutional change, institutional design, and human
agency remain baZingly complex. The history of diVerent varieties of capitalism158 michael moran