A new paradigm for economic analysis?: Recent convergences in French social science and an exploration of the convention theory approach with a consideration of its application to the analysis of the agrofood system

Abstract

This article reviews recent convergences in the French social literature, particularly those emerging between the sociology and economics of innovation, regulation theory and convention theory, focusing primarily on the contribution of this latter. In the first section, examples of collaboration across these different currents are discussed and the migration of key concepts identified. This is followed by a more detailed comparsion of the respective contributions of convention and regulation theory which has dominated ‘non-standard’ economic thinking in France since the late 1970s. The main features of convention theory are then presented together with an appreciation of this approach's potential for providing a new framework within which to situate the emergence, consolidation and transformation of different patterns of economic co-ordination. this potential is illustrated with reference to the analysis of the agrofood sector. The article focuses specifically on convention theory since its contribution has been less widely discussed in the Anglo-Saxon literature than its ‘rival/complement’ regulation theory. Areas of convergence and contrast with recent developments in the new micro-economics and the new economic sociology are also considered.