How to foster social progress: an ordonomic perspective on progressive institutional change

According to the institutionalist position, institutional change is progressive to the extent that ceremonial behavioral patterns are replaced by instrumental ones. This article shows how the ordonomic research program operationalizes and explains the feasibility of progressive institutional change. The key ordonomic argument is that instrumental value is expressed in the inclusive win-win semantics that, by virtue of its very inclusiveness, is capable of transcending the win-lose semantics implicated in ceremonial value. This argument is illustrated with the European growth miracle as the prime historical example of progressive institutional change.