Private Law and Political Economy

This chapter discusses the ‘political economic’ approach to private law. The
political economic approach is instrumental for the study of private law’s role
in making, and eventually remaking, different social institutions and processes,
such as markets, global value chains, corporations, globalisation etc. In this
chapter then, after situating the intellectual locus of ‘private law and political
economy’, I first outline how law and political economy scholars view the social
institution of markets, which is often the locus of their scholarly interest (Legal
Context 1). Second, to exemplify the kind of inquiry that one may encounter in
this line of scholarship, I ask what role private law plays in fostering either more
emancipatory (‘freedom’) or more coercive (‘exploitation’) side of markets
as social institutions. To do so, I start by discussing how private law enables
the more coercive side of markets, by way of narrowing down what unfair
exploitation and unjust enrichment stand for (Legal Context 2).1 I then turn
to outline how private law may foster more emancipatory side of markets, by
means of expanding what ‘private’ stands for (Societal Implications).