https://thinkingprospectus.substack.com/p/the-moral-economy-tradition-intellectual

The Moral Economy Tradition: Intellectual Genealogy, Structural Theory, and the Architecture of Embedded Responsibility

A Supplementary Essay to The Great Decoupling - see link here: https://thinkingprospectus.substack.com/p/the-great-decoupling-how-incentives

Markets don’t become legitimate by being “efficient.” They become legitimate when responsibility is embedded. In a new supplementary essay (“The Moral Economy Tradition”), we trace a lineage from E. P. Thompson to Karl Polanyi to James C. Scott, Mark Granovetter, and Jamel Akbar — connecting moral norms, embeddedness, networks, and the built environment into one practical framework.

The throughline: Accountability isn’t primarily an ethical posture. It’s an institutional architecture.

Here’s the diagnostic we end with — how “decoupling” happens in modern systems:

1. Proximity dissolves (decision-makers become distant from consequences)
2. Reciprocity erodes (obligations become one-directional)
3. Voice is removed (affected parties lose meaningful contestation power)

If we want durable legitimacy and cooperation, we have to design institutions that make responsibility structural — not merely voluntary.

Where do you see decoupling most clearly in your field? And what would “re-embedding” look like in practice?

Essay: https://thinkingprospectus.substack.com/p/the-moral-economy-tradition-intellectual

#PoliticalEconomy #InstitutionalDesign #Accountability #EconomicSociology #MoralEconomy #Polanyi #Thompson #Granovetter #SocialTheory #Governance #Legitimacy #Embeddedness #EconomicSociology