All economists, whether orthodox or heterodox, argue that “institutions matter”. This course will explore the tensions within this claim by contrasting the orthodox New Institutional Economics (NIE) with a rival one that draws on the insights of the Original Institutional Economics (OIE), Karl Polanyi, and American Legal Realism. The contemporary Law and Political Economy (LPE) tradition, which builds on OIE and Legal Realism, is a vital extension of the broad heterodox economics tradition. It challenges Law and Economics, the World Bank’s global development policies, and neoclassical economics more generally. Rejecting the neoclassical view that “government intervention” may be merited when there are “market failures”, the course will use the concept of social cost theory to understand why private property rights are political; the legal basis of inequality and ecological degradation; the significance of technology platforms and disinformation; and the rise of authoritarian modes of market control, i.e. authoritarian libertarianism. Finally, this course will explore the ways in which the LPE tradition extends insights regarding business investment, industrial competition, and class conflict in classical political economy. It will be shown that the LPE framework constitutes a powerful critique and alternative to the Washington Consensus while extending many insights from heterodox economics.