Research Handbook on Law and Political Economy (second edition)

In 2015, when the first edition of this Research Handbook was published (then edited by John Haskell and Ugo Mattei), what is now known as the Law and Political Economy (LPE) movement was not a movement yet. Ten years later, the situation is entirely different. Whether we welcome or regret it, it is impossible to ignore or to dismiss “Law and Political Economy” as a marginal intellectual project: with a dedicated journal, conferences, research centers, and an increasingly coherent scholarly identity, it has become firmly established within legal academia.

This second edition perfectly reflects this evolution—the transformation of an emerging intellectual current into a self-conscious movement—and marks a significant shift in ambition. This is first evidenced by the change of title itself: from a Research Handbook on Political Economy and Law to Research Handbook on Law and Political Economy. While the first edition sought to articulate law with political economy, the second focuses squarely on an established doctrinal movement. Much more, obviously, than a reversal of words: a radical change in perspective. An evolution that is further illustrated by a significant shift in the respective introductions of the two volumes, which reveal a deep change in their historical and intellectual orientations. The 2015 volume was explicitly tied to the immediate aftermath of the 2007–2008 financial crisis, framing the book as an urgent response to a specific systemic failure—actually a failure of capitalism. By contrast and comparison, this new volume abandons almost entirely the rhetoric of the crisis to link its project directly to the consolidation of LPE as a discipline and a scholarly network.

The architecture of the book has also been transformed. The themes and objects of political economy around which the first edition was organized (Money and Markets; Industry, Labour and the State; Commodities, Land and Resources) have been replaced with categories that correspond much more precisely to the analytical vocabulary specific to LPE (Coercion and Freedom, Markets, Money, Property, Work), giving the volume a clearer and more assertive doctrinal identity. Consequently, the book tells a different story. Certainly, the total length (about 600 pages) and the number of chapters (33) remain virtually unchanged. However, only half (16) of the contributions of the first edition remain in this second one (including the work of Roy Kreitner, L. Randall Wray, Ramsi Woodcock, Jaye Ellis, Umut Özsu, Dan Danielsen, and Grietje Baars). In particular, among others, the contributions on financial stability or corporate financialization, or some legal-historical case studies (such as early Soviet property law), have been removed. In their place, seventeen entirely new contributions have been introduced that perfectly reflect the contemporary intellectual priorities of the LPE project. For instance, a new section dedicated to Coercion and Freedom has been introduced in which one finds chapters about gender (Miriam Bak-McKenna and Maj Grasten) or critical theories of subordination (Angela P. Harris), both of which were absent from the first edition. Similarly, the volume now includes chapters explicitly framed in terms of Law and Political Economy, such as “An LPE Approach to Property” (Lua Kamál Yuille), “Social Data’s Role in Law and Political Economy” (Salomé Viljoen), “The Political Economy of Food” (Andrea Freeman), or “LPE and Workplace Organization” (Jedidiah Kroncke).

The result is certainly impressive. Anyone interested in understanding the contemporary LPE movement will have to read this handbook. There is no doubt that it will become the standard reference on the subject for years to come. The breadth of topics covered is remarkable, ranging from property, labor law, antitrust, international trade, finance, environmental governance, taxation, and corporate governance to race, gender, colonialism, and democracy. The contributors include many of the leading figures associated with the LPE movement, and the volume successfully conveys both the diversity of its concerns and, above all, the coherence of its ambitions.

The coherence derives primarily from the fact that this handbook is more (or less, depending on which side one stands on) than a conventional handbook. It is better read as a manifesto that defines and consolidates LPE not only as a distinct, unified scholarly project, but also as an explicitly normative one. The editor makes no secret of this orientation. In the introduction, John Haskell writes that “the LPE agenda is imagined to be guided by a political and normative stand” (p. 9). This normative position can rather easily be summarized as follows. Markets are not natural phenomena, but institutional arrangements constituted by legal rules. Property rights, contractual freedom, corporate forms, monetary institutions, and regulatory frameworks are not external constraints imposed upon markets; they are the very conditions that make markets possible. For LPE scholars, however, the problem is that these rules and institutions have been captured by private interests and turned to oppressive ends and have therefore become instruments of domination—rather than serving as the instruments of emancipation and freedom they should be. This diagnosis is reflected in the claim that contemporary legal scholarship has become excessively preoccupied with efficiency and insufficiently concerned with justice, equality, and the protection of minorities. In other words, starting from a positive statement that few scholars working today in law, economics, or political economy would oppose, LPE rapidly moves to a normative interpretation that tends to eclipse its positive side.

The responsibility for this evolution is largely attributed to the growing influence of economics on legal scholarship, and more precisely to the introduction of economic reasoning into the analysis of legal and institutional questions, which is said to have contributed to transforming legal institutions into instruments that legitimate and reproduce relations of domination. This is why LPE criticizes so much, and so fiercely, “law and economics.” This is certainly not the only point one finds in these 600 pages, but it is one of the pillars of the LPE movement. Again, in the introduction, Haskell writes that “LPE . . . aim[s] at providing an alternative to the conservative law and economic (sic) movement” (p. 9).

One difficulty, however, is that the object of criticism remains surprisingly and largely ill-defined. Throughout the volume, and throughout LPE writings more generally, “law and economics” is treated as though it referred to a coherent intellectual tradition, as a unique “movement.” Yet law and economics has never been a unified enterprise, and the distinction between “law and economics” as a broad academic field and the economic analysis of law as one particular methodological approach is almost entirely absent from the LPE rhetoric (see Sophie Harnay and Alain Marciano, “Posner, Economics and the Law: From ‘Law and Economics’ to an Economic Analysis of Law,” Journal of the History of Economic Thought 31, no. 2 [2009]: 215–232; Alain Marciano, “Economic Analysis of Law,” in Alain Marciano and Giovanni Battista Ramello [eds.], Encyclopedia of Law and Economics [Springer, 2025]; Peter J. Boettke and Rosolino A. Candela, “Good Economics, Bad Law and Political Economy,” Journal of Law, Economics, and Policy 20, no. 1 [2025]: 65–90; and Peter J. Boettke, Rosolino A. Candela, and Alain Marciano, “Public Choice, Law and Economics, and the Economic Analysis of Law: A Political Economy Reassessment,” unpublished manuscript [2026]). This should matter. The differences separating Ronald Coase from Richard Posner, James Buchanan from Gary Becker, Elinor Ostrom from the standard economic analysis of law, or constitutional political economy from welfare economics are substantial. They concern not only methods but also conceptions of institutions, property rights, collective action, and the role of the state. By treating these traditions largely as variations of the same paradigm, the volume (and LPE more broadly) risks overlooking important internal debates that have shaped the evolution of legal and economic thought over the past sixty years.

In doing so, the volume also risks directing its criticism at law and economics as a whole, whereas many of the arguments advanced by LPE are more appropriately addressed to particular versions of the economic analysis of law. Ironically, many of the questions that LPE seeks to place at the center of legal scholarship have long occupied significant parts of both political economy and law and economics, albeit from different analytical and normative perspectives.

This observation leads to what is perhaps my principal reservation. The title promises a handbook on Law and Political Economy. The difficulty is not that LPE proposes its own conception of political economy. Political economy has never had a single meaning. The difficulty is that LPE tends to identify political economy with one particular conception of it, one that differs significantly from what many economists and historians of economic thought have traditionally understood by that expression. From Adam Smith and John Stuart Mill to the Italian scienza delle finanze, from Knut Wicksell and Buchanan to Douglass North and Ostrom, political economy has generally referred to the study of the reciprocal relationships between economic organization, legal institutions, and political decision-making. It aims to explain how institutions emerge, evolve, and shape economic outcomes, while recognizing that political incentives are constrained by constitutional and legal arrangements.

The political economy developed in this handbook is of a different nature. Here, the adjective “political” refers less to the analytical study of politics than to the normative claim that legal institutions should be evaluated primarily in terms of power, hierarchy, and distributive justice. This is, of course, a perfectly legitimate research program, and the editor makes no attempt to conceal its normative commitments. Indeed, one of the virtues of the volume is precisely its intellectual candor. Nevertheless, readers expecting an overview of the broader tradition of political economy may be surprised to discover that many of its central contributors are only marginally present. Institutional economics, constitutional political economy, Public Choice, and the Virginia School appear mainly as objects of criticism, if they appear at all, rather than as possible interlocutors.

This omission is somewhat paradoxical. Many of the questions raised throughout the handbook—how legal rules constitute markets, how property rights shape economic organization, how institutions influence power relations, or how governance structures evolve—are precisely the questions that have also occupied scholars such as Coase, Buchanan, Armen Alchian, Harold Demsetz, North, and Ostrom. Their answers undoubtedly differ from those proposed by LPE scholars, and profoundly so. But the questions themselves are similar. One therefore wonders whether a more systematic engagement with these traditions would not have strengthened rather than weakened the intellectual ambitions of the volume. Rather than presenting law and economics as a largely monolithic enterprise, the handbook might have benefited from acknowledging the diversity of approaches that already exist within institutional and political economy. Rather than implicitly identifying political economy with one particular critical tradition, the handbook might have benefited from engaging with other traditions of political economy that have long explored the relationship between law, institutions, power, and inequality. The absence of such a dialogue is one of the most striking features of the volume. It leaves the impression that LPE sometimes defines itself more through the traditions it rejects than through a dialogue with traditions that have long addressed many of the same questions. This creates a certain ambiguity in the movement itself, blurring the distinction between its positive and normative dimensions and making it more difficult to assess its scientific contribution. That said, those who are interested in the LPE movement—even if not in political economy—should find this volume rich, stimulating, and indeed necessary.