This is the very first book to explicitly both detail the core general principles of institutional and evolutionary political economy and also apply the principles to current world problems such as the coronavirus crisis, climate change, corruption, AI-Robotics, policy-governance, money and financial instability, terrorism, AIDS-HIV and the nurturance gap. No other book has ever detailed explicitly such core principles and concepts nor ever applied them explicitly to numerous current major problems. The core general principles and concepts in this book, which are outlined and detailed include historical specificity & evolution; hegemony & uneven development; circular & cumulative causation; heterogeneous groups & agents; contradiction & creative destruction; uncertainty; innovation; and policy & governance.
This book details the nature of how these principles and concepts can be used to explain current critical issues and problems throughout the world. This book includes updated chapters that have won two journal research Article of the Year Awards on climate change (one from the European Association for Evolutionary Political Economy, EAEPE); as well as a Presidential address to the Association for Evolutionary Economics (AFEE) on corruption.
The structure of the book starts with two chapters on the principles of institutional and evolutionary political economy: firstly their history, and secondly a chapter on the contemporary nature of the principles and concepts. This is followed by nine chapters applying some of the core principles to current world problems such as the coronacrisis, climate change, corruption, AI-robotics, policy, money & financial instability, terrorism, HIV-AIDS and the nurturance gap. The book finishes with a conclusion, a glossary of major terms and an index. The author’s principles are well established in the literature and this book provides a detailed exposition of them and their application.
This book has been awarded the 2025 Joan Robinson Prize for Book of the Year by the European Association for Evolutionary Political Economy (EAEPE).
Phillip Anthony O’Hara has been Director of the Global Political Economy Research Unit (GPERU) since 1998; and President of the Association for Evolutionary Economics (AFEE) 2013-14. He won Prizes for Book of the Year and Refereed Journal Paper of the Year from the European Association for Evolutionary Political Economy (EAEPE); plus Researcher of the Year, Book of the Year and Refereed Journal Article of the Year (twice) from Curtin Business School. In 2015, he presented the Inaugural Fred Lee Memorial Lecture in Heterodox Economics at the University of New South Wales. During 2018 and 2022, he was invited as Special Guest Speaker to the annual EAEPE conferences in Nice and Naples, respectively.
He has published over a hundred articles in refereed journals and edited books; and 14 volumes of books and special issues of journals, including two multi-volume encyclopedias (one on political economy, the other on policy); and is on the Editorial/Advisory Boardsof several journals, including the
Review of Evolutionary Political Economy (linked to EAEPE);
Panoeconomicus (Serbia-based); the
International Journal of Pluralism and Economics Education (USA); and
Terra Economicus (Rostov-on-Don, Russia). He recently completed this book on
Principles of Institutional and Evolutionary Political Economy: Applied to Current World Problems (Springer 2022); and is working on several others, including
Long Waves, Economic Crises of Capitalism and Social Structures of Accumulation: Principles and Empirics; as well as a
Global History of the World.
