The market in global international society:a dialectic of contestation and resilience

This chapter gives an overview of how the market became a primary institution of global international society during the nineteenth century, and how its standing in that role has fared since then. It will pay particular attention to the rather dramatic cycle of rise and fall in the standing of ‘market ideology’ over the past two centuries, which is an unusual feature in the evolution of primary institutions. Such institutions normally emerge, evolve and sometimes decline in a smoother pattern. The chapter uses this distinctive feature of the market to think about the present standing of this institution and how to interpret it.