Political Economy vs. Economic Sociology

[nerdspeak]

Can anyone offer an explanation of the difference between these two fields? I know I want to study an institutionalist approach to economics, similar to that of Ha-Joon Chang, and I know I can't do this through most American economics department.

Edited September 12, 2012 by nerdspeak

[Helix]

Not an economic sociologist, but previously looked into both sociology and polisci departments with a similar set of interests. My sense of economic sociology was that some of the people doing neat work in this area largely focus on micro-level phenomena (the meanings of money, participation in labor markets, ethnographies of industrialization, urbanization and transformation of cities through development, etc.). In polisci, the political economy field is pretty varied--you'd have IPE folks focusing on financial institutions, markets, and transnational financial infrastructures; CPE folks doing everything from institutional explanations for economic development to explanations of tax structures and extractive industries to varieties of capitalism.

Ha-Joon Chang's work sits in a sort of interdisciplinary nexus. And it's possible that you could be happy in either field as long as you were at an institution with faculty that were a good fit for your interests. I think you're right that this isn't the project for an American economics department, but it may also (depending on how you flesh our your questions) not be a project for an American polisci department either--my impression is that departments and faculty in the UK are more pluralistic in their approach to this set of issues.

My two cents: read around, see who else's work you like, who cites Chang and uses methods you like and asks questions you think are smart. Find out what departments they're in and where they got their training. It may be that you apply to a few sociology departments, a few polisci, and maybe even a few policy or development studies degrees. But probably the department fit will not be entirely determined by the discipline you apply in.

[Maxx]

I agree with a lot of what Helix has written. I think that economic sociology as it is practiced currently is definitely not what you're looking for. Political science departments is closer (comparative political economy), but that is still not so much institutional economics. Your target area is small if your reference is HaJoon Chang, so I think you should look for specific people instead of departments. The following may be of consideration:

Robert Wade at LSE

Dani Rodrik at HKS

Erik Reinert at Tallinn U of Tech

Geoffrey Hodgson at U of Hertfordshire

plus one or two economists at UMass Amherst (can't recall the names)

Note that you may have some difficulty finding jobs afterwards since HaJoon and all these people are very heterodoxy (except Rodrik). But I guess you know that already.