Law and Conventions from historical Perspective. Revue Historical Social Research, n° 1, 2015

Sous la direction de Rainer Diaz-Bone, Claude Didry et Robert Salais
Historical Social Research
N° 1 – 2015
GESIS – Leibniz Institute for the Social Sciences

The institutional approach of economics of convention (in short, EC) has been established in France over the last three decades and since then received growing international recognition. From its beginnings, EC has introduced a pragmatic as well as a historical perspective on economic coordination and economic institutions. Also, EC has included law in its analysis from the start. EC conceives law not as an external constraint, but as internal to action and coordination open to interpretive and situational adoption by competent actors. Consequently, for the socio-historical analysis of law, EC analyzes the meaning of law from the standpoint of actors which rely in their coordination on conventions. This HSR Special Issue demonstrates that the approach of EC in the socio-historical analysis of law can be a real transdisciplinary alternative to approaches such as “Law & Economics” or economic neo-institutionalism.