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The in-born contradiction in Boyer’s middle-range institutionalism is exactly the
‘reduction of the explanatory scheme to a mere description’ as it analyses the
systematic coherence in terms of ‘real-type configuration of institutions’ as opposed to
systematic coherence in system integrationist terms. Without the definitive real
ontology of its once value-theoretical foundations, regulation theory’s a posteriori
functionalism ‘could not convincingly take this role of unity reference ... The
correspondence of an accumulation regime and a mode of regulation cannot explain
their unity. In fact, pure ex-post functionalism reveals the impossibility of explaining
its object in theoretical terms’(Perkmann 1996:1). In other words, the five
institutional forms in Boyer’ analysis of complementarity and hierarchy are not
inclusive as such but are inclusive without a ‘unity reference’. Accumulation regimes
and their coherence in and through régulation is thus a thorough objet trouvé.
Jessop, on the other hand, considers regulation theory as an integral economic
heuristic; it has both a modality and an object. Theories of governance, on the other
hand, are integral political heuristics; they have a modality and an object as well. For
Jessop, regulation theory as political economy of the economy with the political
economy of the political as in governance theories would be a ‘post-disciplinary
approach’ without integral economism or functionalism(1995b:1624-5). That would
still be so despite certain ‘theoretical and substantive differences between the two
paradigms’ since ‘these are largely contingent differences, rooted in the ways in which
they have been applied, rather than differences inherent in the nature of the paradigms
themselves’(Jessop 1995a:317). However, governance theories touch upon
‘modalities of co-ordination’ with objects whose ‘characteristics are not restricted a
priori, as in the case of regulation, and range from whole societies to the ‘self’ ... More
radically, objects of governance are ‘quasi-objects’’(Perkmann 2007:11). In other
words, ‘that objects of regulation assume a greater coherence than the objects of
governance is therefore a systemic feature of regulation theory. For governance
approaches, in turn, the modalities of co-ordination are theoretically privileged over
the objects of governance’(ibid.:10).
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