Convention, Social Order, and the Two Coordinations

摘要: The word “coordination” has two meanings, and thesemeanings are often conflated. One meaning, associated with ThomasSchelling, is seen in situations like choosing whether to driveon the left or right; drivers must coordinate eachother's behavior. other FriedrichHayek, means that a concatenation of activities arranged soas produce good results. Along Schelling sense ofcoordination comes notion convention, such as drivingon right. Some conventions consciously designed; othersemerge without design (or “emergent”). Hayeksense coordination social order. Somesocial orders, skeleton within thefirm hypothetical socialist economy, consciouslyplanned. Other catallaxy freesociety, function central planning “spontaneous”).Distinguishing between coordinations (and, parallelfashion, convention order) clarifies thinkingand resolves some confusions have arisen discussionsof “spontaneous order.” key distinctionsare discussed context thought of, on one hand,Menger, Schelling, David Lewis, recent path-dependencetheorists, and, hand, Smith, Hayek, Polanyi, Coase,and modern Austrian economists. paper concludes witha typology encompasses several distinctions.