CONCLUSIONS
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 19 January 2010
Summary
THE PROPERTY FRAMEWORK
With the collapse of the communist regimes in Eastern Europe and changes elsewhere, Fukuyama (1992) has written prominently of the ‘end of history’. Veterans of social instability doubt the inevitability of this evolution, but, for the time being, capitalism in the guise of liberal democracy and market economics has everywhere triumphed. Yet this simple observation glosses over the multitude of arrangements possible within a liberal capitalist framework. Graham (1989: 210) comments:
there is a tendency to assume markets are free, spontaneous growths. However, even in the classical laissez-faire model, the ground rules for the market are set by the minimal state. The selection of any one particular rule against another will create a different type of market. As Frug puts it: ‘There is … not “a” market mechanism, but as many markets as there are possible rules to define them.’ This leads to the final point, which is the paradox at the heart of the neo-classical view. It is a mistake to see the minimal state as a weak state. In order to guarantee the conditions that will allow markets to flourish the state must be strong and active.
In some sectors of the economy, those rules might seem settled. But innovation, now a global technological revolution, undermines, without determining, the existing monopolies of thought and interest in the structures of the economy and law. It is hoped that this study, especially in chapters 3 to 5, has demonstrated that innovation raises again the basic questions concerning the appropriation of important resources, and sometimes essential attributes, through the media of property and related private rights.
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- Innovation, Policy and Law , pp. 300 - 307Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1993