ABSTRACT
This chapter outlines a theoretical framework for understanding institutional change during capitalist transitions. A central argument will be that the reciprocal conditioning of economic and institutional change is frequently a discontinuous rather than incremental process. Recurrent instability is a feature of both institutional and economic life during capitalism’s development. The economist, Joseph Schumpeter, gave a strong sense of this when he described the ‘jerks and rushes’ of industrial progress and its associated ‘social and cultural’ transformations.
