Abstract

The article highlights the current theories in the New Economic History, explaining the market social order rules imposed in the Western World in the post Renaissance period. The social order structure, based on impersonal exchange and rational prudence, differing from any other order in the history of human societies, is derived from a specific set of political and military conditions and world view. The institutional decisions taken as a result thereof enable the contemporary levels of production, trade and economic growth. The applied explanatory approach integrates on the ground of their common features the alternative concepts of this process elaborated by А. Greif, А. Acemoglu and J. Robinson, D. North, J. Wallis and B. Weingast.