The Politics of Economic Activity

This title confronts head-on deeply rooted understandings of how politics affects economics. It proposes a robust, incisive alternative definition of politics: the mobilisation of values to change or reproduce the institutions that orientate, and indeed make possible, economic activity. Drawing upon constructivist strands of institutionalism, political sociology, and industrial economics, this definition generates an analytical framework for understanding the 'political work' that constantly orientates the behaviour of both firms and public authorities.