The notion of ‘constitution’ refers to the fundamental architecture of a polity considered as an organised collective structure encompassing multiple levels of agency and a variety of plural institutions beyond the state. A given constitution of the economy provides a set of conditions determining which patterns of division of labour are feasible under the existing structure of the polity, and which ones are not. This chapter outlines a framework for analysing the economic constitution in terms of the relatively invariant constellation of dispositions and interests characterising the existing polity. A given economic constitution is consistent with a limited range of variation of the division of labour and group affiliations, while more radical changes might take the economy away from the existing constitutional arrangement. On that basis the chapter also conceptualises the ‘economic body’ as the pattern of organised complexity arising from the relative positions and feasible motions within the economy and characterising the economic constitution of the polity. Finally, the chapter explores the way in which alternative arrangements of social networks influence the response patterns of economic constitutions to factors of change and provides a heuristic for identifying feasible policy options and transformation trajectories under given circumstances.

The Introduction outlines the book’s conceptual foundations, starting with a theory of political economy as constitution that builds on both economic and political thought to conceptualise the relationships between the economic and the political bodies. Accordingly, the body politic is an orderly arrangement of individuals and groups fitting a collective condition, or purpose, which would at a minimum include the persistence of the political body itself. Similarly, the economic body is an orderly arrangement of individuals and groups fitting a systemic condition for material sustenance and welfare, which would at a minimum ensure resilience of an organised economic sphere. The theory of political economy shows shifts between a focus on dispositional activities (such as allocation of capabilities or resources) and a focus on material and social interdependencies. This dynamic often makes it difficult to identify the underlying unity of political economy. Reductionist theoretical developments, both in economic and in political theory, have failed to address the embeddedness and mutual shaping of dispositions and structures at multiple levels of aggregation in the economy and the polity. The Introduction sketches a new theoretical framework that avoids both types of reductionism by highlighting the close integration between human dispositions and socio-economic interdependencies.