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institutions in particular times and territories are also part of the overall regulationist
research which is more holistic than methodological individualist. Regulation theory
as such is an open institutionalism which nevertheless espouses, ‘institutions produce
a social dynamics and hence institutions are unintelligible without reference to a
social dynamics’(Favereau 2002:317). One final contrast between neoclassical theory
and the theory of capitalist regulation is about their concepts of time. The neoclassical
market ethos tritely excoriates any concept of time in which time would be informal
and/or differential. Here is another closed abstraction. Neoclassical concept of time
is an abstraction from nuances and caesurae between and along concrete time.
Regulationists on the other hand agree with the evolutionary and institutionalist
economics’ time-concept in that socio-economic change is largely ‘path-dependent
and irreversible’(Jessop 1997:295).
3.1 Institutions Matter
Those paradigms that resort to thematic institutionalism mostly either have been
methodological and/or ontological individualist or rehearsed concomitant forms of
holism. Thematic institutionalism for individualists often touch upon the analysis of
the prolusory design and macro patterns of institutions in terms of individualist
microfoundations of social phenomena. The effort is ultimately about a further
imprimatur of these microfoundations’ explanatory pep upon nascent institutions.
Thematic institutionalism in holistic paradigms on the other hand strictly analyses the
institutions and institutional changes on the basis of the effects which stem from
broader societal mechanisms. Briefly, this model of institutionalist makeover is
scarcely a substantial change of mindset in each credo. The thematic makeover is
about the fact that both holistic and individualist methods of analsis further undersell
the unknowns and the mesolevel of institutional procedures with a heavy degree of
individualism or holism. It is in short a form of functionalist-poaching in reseach.
Methodological institutionalism circumscribes the institutional nexus as a particularly
prolific window of theoretical excursion albeit alongside other explanatory models
and polemicises certain heretofore epistemological, methodological and ontological
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