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).