ABSTRACT
The traditional division between economics and politics is collapsing. The analysis of power relations, which used to be the focus of political science, is becoming very important to understand the ‘contested nature’ of market exchanges; moreover, opening the ‘black boxes’ by which firms used to be characterized in economic theory has focussed the attention of economists on the internal politics of the firm. At the same time politics has been increasingly characterized as an exchange between utility-maximizing voters and vote-maximizing politicians.
