Dr Michael G. Heller

'The Open Book' by Juan Gris 1925 The Origins of Impersonal Rule in England 1626-1642 Current Project: My aim is to trace the origins of modern impersonal state governance in the evolving codes for interaction and interpenetration within and between institutions of law, administration, and political representation. In the past 2 years I found evidence of such origins earlier than most scholars, in a 30-year period preceding, during, after the ‘Personal Rule’ of Charles I, when legal battles over prerogative, predictability, partiality, were won or lost. My interest in British history has been the role played by seventeenth century English lawyer-politicians (Coke, Hale, et al., especially Oliver St John) in systematising ideas about legal order in governance, and their active experimentation with procedures (e.g. committees, legal dispute, enforcement innovations) which impacted on evolving prototypical separations of powers and pressure for depersonalisation of state proc...

Nicholas Roerich 'Everest' 1938 Why theorise capitalism? As Mallory said of Mount Everest, “because it’s there”. Today begins a new series titled The Economic Sociology of  Capitalism .   I will draw from a draft chapter  that I sent to Peter Dougherty — chief editor at Princeton University Press — in October 2003 along with my book proposal.  Unbeknown to me Dougherty was at that precise moment in continual communication with (1993 Nobel Prize winner)  Douglass North while he prepared the manuscript of North's 2005 book with Princeton.  All my submissions to publishers and journals were critical of Douglass North for ignoring the impersonality of modern institutions.  Dougherty wrote to say he liked my proposal and encouraged me to send more chapters, which I could not do until 2006 when the manuscript was finished.  I finally had it published with Routledge in 2009 as  Capitalism, Institutions, and Economic Development . ...

Anthony van Dyck ‘Studies of a Man's Head’ (17th century) The analytical complementarity between Schumpeter and Weber is the focus of this week’s essay on competition with temporary monopoly, i.e. imperfect competition. I find that wherever one of these two men lacks something, the other one provides it. I came to study Joseph Schumpeter’s work through an immersion in the writings of Max Weber. Young Schumpeter also developed his distinctive economics ‘through’ the elder Max Weber. They influenced each other, and their paths converged in creating the subject called ‘economic sociology’. The effect of Weber on Schumpeter was especially deep. Schumpeter acknowledged his admiration for Weber’s intellectual and moral strength, leadership, courage, sense of duty, and charisma -- “He was an imposing figure. You submitted to him, whether or not you wanted to. Energy resounded from his every word, flowed from every pore of his being”. Interestingly, Schumpeter described Weber ...

Irma Stern's 'Portrait of a Young Malay Girl' 1939 Southeast Asians sometimes use cultural or hereditary arguments to explain their own allegedly easy-going, deferential and uncompetitive nature. In a 1970 book The Malay Dilemma Mahathir Mohamad -- the eccentric and bad mannered prime minister of Malaysia from 1981 to 2003 -- justified giving Malays special economic and political privileges designed to help them overcome a historic ethnic-cultural disadvantage vis-à-vis the country’s more go-getting Chinese and Indian population. Mahatir argued it was simply good breeding, manners, and nobility which habitually made a Malay “stand aside and let someone else pass”.  Until the influx of Chinese and Indian migrants during British colonial rule Malaysia’s resource base allowed the indigenous population comparative comfort without the need for undue exertion or ingenuity. Malays did not have to be ‘fit to survive’. They had free time and ample food. Seeing that Chinese o...

Max Beckmann 'Party in Paris' 1947 There is a deep flaw in the centrepiece political argument of Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the Twenty-First Century . Piketty claims the rentier is the enemy of democracy. Yet there are two obvious ways in which wealth inequality and rentier wealth could be beneficial to democracy. The first relates to the likelihood that institutional designers will be more vigilant and insistent in updating safeguards against the distorting influence of money in politics once there is broad-based acceptance that wealth creation and wealth inequality are permanent, symbiotic features of democratic society. The second relates to the unique position of the rentier with secure independent wealth who lives off returns on capital or land. He or she is in some respects the ideal politician. The rentier can afford to be distant and detached from economic interests and to hold independent political convictions. He does not struggle to keep a business aflo...