Modern institutional economics was created to study the institutions of pre-digital economies and is based on reductionist approaches. But digital capitalism is producing institutions of unprecedented complexity. This book argues, therefore, that not only the economic institutions themselves but also the theoretical foundations for studying those institutions must now be adapted to digital capitalism. The book focuses on the institutional complexity of digital capitalism, developing an interdisciplinary framework which brings together cutting-edge theoretical approaches from philosophy (first of all, object-oriented ontology), sociology (especially actor–network theory), evolutionary biology, and cognitive science. In particular, the book outlines a new approach to the study of institutional evolution, based on extended evolutionary synthesis – a new paradigm in evolutionary biology, which is now replacing neo-Darwinism. The book develops an enactivist notion of extended cognition and cognitive institutions, rejecting the individualistic and mechanistic understanding of economic rationality in digital environments. The author experiments with new philosophical approaches to investigate institutional complexity, for example, the ideas of the flat ontology and the assemblage theory. The flat ontology approach is applied to the study of human–robot institutions, as well as to thinking about post-anthropocentric institutional design. Assemblage thinking allows for a new (much less idealistic) look at blockchain and smart cities. Blockchain as digital institutional technology is considered in the book not from the viewpoint of minimizing transaction costs (as is customary in the modern institutional economics), but by using the theory of transaction value which focuses on improving the quality of digital transactions. The book includes a wide range of examples ranging from metaverses, cryptocurrencies, and big data to robot rules, smart contracts, and machine learning algorithms. Written for researchers in institutional economics and other social sciences, this interdisciplinary book is essential reading for anyone interested in the interplay of institutional and digital change.
Contents
Preface
Acknowledgments
Introduction: understanding the institutional complexity of digital capitalism
1. Toward a complexity-oriented institutional economics
1.1. Institutional economics at peak and in midlife crisis
1.2. What is lacking in modern institutional analysis?
1.3. Exploring institutional complexity: methodological pluralism plus post-disciplinarity
1.4. Why do we need new philosophical foundations?
2. Really, what are institutions? (beyond Occam’s chainsaw)
2.1. Institutions as rules of the MMO games
2.2. Institutions in flux: institutional logics and combinations come together
2.3. Institutions and their stakeholder communities
2.4. Digital materiality of institutions: artifacts, interfaces, metaverses
3. Institutional complexity matters!
3.1. The Great Complexification of institutions
3.2. Irreducible institutional complexity
3.3. Digital institutions as escaping hyperobjects
3.4. Parallax: beyond the individualism-holism debates
4. A Post-Darwinist paradigm of institutional evolution
4.1. Institutional complexity beats Darwinism
4.2. The extended evolutionary synthesis and institutional evolution
4.3. From stones to processes: a fluid ontology of digital institutions
5. Cognitive institutions in digital environments
5.1. Toward enactivist view of cognition (and artificial intelligence)
5.2. What are cognitive institutions?
5.3. Cognitive institutions and ecological rationality
6. Digital institutional co-production
6.1. Performativity, bricolage, kludges
6.2. Co-production of institutions: niche-construction perspective
6.3. The COVID-19 and co-production of cognitive institutions
7. Institutional assemblages of digital capitalism
7.1. Assemblage: a new way of thinking about institutional systems
7.2. Blockchain as an institutional assemblage
7.3. Assemblage and the smart city: institutional logics under digital skin
8. Effectiveness of digital institutions: from transaction costs to transaction value
8.1. Transaction costs as frictions in an increasingly frictionless world
8.2. Toward a theory of transaction value
8.3. Blockchain and transaction value: how intermediaries survive transaction costs revolution
9. Digital institutions: wrong or weird?
9.1. Institutional anomalies are not bad institutions: relativistic view
9.2. From deviations to variations, from institutions to extitutions
9.3. Robot rules: a case of post-anthropocentric extitutions
9.3.1. What are robots – products, natural entities, or neighbors?
9.3.2. Flat ontology and co-production of robot rules
Conclusion
Index
Biography
Daniil Frolov is a Professor of Institutional Economics at the Volgograd State Technical University, Russia. He was awarded the Leonid Abalkin Prize for institutional and evolutionary economists by the Centre for Evolutionary Economics (Institute of Economics, Russian Academy of Sciences).
