ABSTRACT
History matters for our study of ECOWAS, how its institutions have mutated and it’s future direction. At the heart of the NIE and Ordoliberal discourse on the performance of institutions and economies is an analysis of the past. The use of history is valuable in that it enables scholars and decision-makers to avoid a misunderstanding of current economic problems. History’s role in the analysis of society and its institutions thus helps shed new light on the economic past and it also provides an analytical framework that will enable us understand economic change. The market is the outcome of a series of past decisions. The development of the sate, particularly its institutions for enforcing and protecting rights such as property rights also enable us to understand current economic complexities. Thus for the NIE School the past is then relevant to the present.1 It is for this reason that Coase, for instance, used historical examples in his study of bargaining in markets characterized by transaction costs.2 In the wake of Coase’s analysis came other NIE scholars such as North, Robert Fogel, and Avner Greif. The usefulness of history for the Ordoliberals is virtually the same. They consistently refer to the history of the world economy, the belle epoch and the Great Depression to ram home their thesis on the world economy, why it flourished and why it collapsed.
