The scope of the paper is twofold:

a) To present the theoretical issues that the project aims to deal with. Particularly, the variety of the schemes and initiatives studied touches essential points of economics, like the notions of value, money, exchange, market, etc. The theoretical options the researcher already has from academic literature can explain some of the aspects the schemes present, but not all of them. As a result, eclecticism and inter-disciplinary approach are rather obligatory. On the other hand, the economic focus of the research imposes that the choices of the “economic agents” are respected as rational in principle, e.g. as based on thought and theory, even if this is not found (yet) in academic literature. And

b) To present the findings of the first stage of field research. This part of research consists of data of mainly qualitative nature, originating in observation and in open interviews with scheme organisers and coordinators. The data is collected in order to formulate some first conclusions about 1) to what extent the theoretical instruments we have from academic literature can explain the issues as posed by the scheme participants’ practice; 2) what theoretical bases the participants use themselves to explain or promote their own activities and to what extent those theoretical views are connected or not to the academic literature we use for the project so far; and 3) what issues among all studied and researched so far are possibly interesting or important to be further researched at the second stage of the project.

In contrast, heterodox theories provide effective methodological and conceptual tools to understand these problems. Indeed, according to them, the worldwide economic crisis has revealed the structural problems of finance-led capitalism. This specific capitalist configuration characterizes itself, among others, by an over-developed sophisticated financial sector detrimental to sustained employment and decent work, due to the fact that labour has became the main adjustment variable in economic processes. This severe crisis also pointed out another critical issue: the inadequacy of mainstream economics in conceptualizing its own research objects, that is economic realities. Thus, beyond the flaws of the economic institutions themselves, are the dysfunctional theoretical tools used by the vast majority of economists to analyse them. The fact is that the current academic agenda, or roughly speaking neoclassical economics, generate economic analysis on the basis of concepts and models disconnected from the real-world economy. Not surprisingly then that it cannot provide appropriate theorizing about key factors of economic life, nor strategic economic issues, like the crisis or public finances. Because of their epistemological posture, neoclassical economists do not pay attention to the real problems of the malfunctioning of economic institutions, and the economic insecurity they generate. In the context of what has now degenerated in many countries in a crisis of employment, jeoparding the economic status of important segments of the population, firstly the most vulnerables, to proceed to a theoretical reconstruction in economics is imperative. What is at stake is our ability to understand economic insecurity in all its complexity, as well as to conceive creative solutions to it by the means of innovative analysis of labour and employment.

If a theoretical shift in economics is a prerequisite to the reorientation of public policies in a progressive way, we know that there is not a single alternative to mainstream economics. Indeed, Economie Autrement brings together economists from across a spectrum of heterodox economic theories, including regulationist, institutionalist, post-Keynesian, or Marxist schools. Our priority has been, in our research, to use a theoretical framework focusing on economic security, and rights and duties guaranteeing it: J. R. Commons’s institutionalist theory. Commons is one of the founders of what is called the original institutionalism, which was developed at the end of the 19th century and continued until the 1940s in the United States. Commons’s theory, whose relevance to the world today is being rediscovered, provides a coherent interdisciplinary conception of economic facts, grounded in their cultural context, in which economics, law and ethics are reconcilied. Using the institutionalist approach, employment and public policies are studied in an entirely different way than it would be within the orthodox theoretical framework. They are examined as phenomena integrated in their own social space, insofar as they define particular social relations in which economic status are established on the basis of combinations of rights and duties. In this way, the active subject in the institutionalist economy is an individual-citizen, instead of the homo oeconomicus of the orthodox perspective. In order to understand the process of economic insecurity, a framework of analysis based on a conception of economics as a social science must be used. Commons’s institutionalism, with its original method of investigation which calls for an ethical dimension, proposes an evolutionary analysis, and takes into account the multitude of society’s rules in terms of social representations, formalized rules of law or actual practices of players, conforms to such a requirement.

The paper will be divided into three parts. Firstly, we will describe this Quebecer initiative for political economy, its actions, and the main economic arguments that were opposed to the analysis of the advisory committee. In section 2, we will give a few insights on how commonsian theory could enrich research on what could be called a public policy agenda of economic security for the post-crisis era. Our general concern is to demonstrate that commonsian institutionalism represents a real theoretical alternative to mainstream economics for the development of a truly evolutionary, trans-disciplinary and ethical economic theory. Lastly, based on the commonsian methodological principle according to which research and action should go hand in hand, we will try to highlight some preliminary lessons that can be drawn from this activist experience. Among others, we will emphasize the fact that international networking of heterodox economists involved in the promotion of political economy, is crucial to maintain initiatives like ours. In that perspective, to participate in the International Conference in Political Economy in Rethymnon is a way, for us, to strengthen ties with associations comparables to ours.