After Old Institutional economics lost its dominance after the 2nd World War, it entered a new revival period; the beginning of this period was marked with Oliver Williamson’s (1975) use of “New Institutional Economics” (NIE) as a new term in his studies. New Institutional Economics analyzes institutions that influence and determine human life deeply such as government, law, markets and family, by combining different disciplines such as legal science, economics, political sciences, sociology etc. But despite these inter-disciplinary attempts, New Institutional Economics has never been a mainstream that follows Old Institutional Economics in terms of epistemology or politics. On the other hand, the only common feature between New Institutional Economics and Old Institutional Economics is the complete opposition to the established economics which is also named neo-classical economics. Besides all of these, discussions on the market mechanism and role of state have been the topics of dispute in almost all of different economics schools of thought. This is the same in New Institutional Economics. In this study, based on the basic features that distinguish New Institutional Economics from Old Institutional Economics, we will firstly attempt to discuss ideological structure of New Institutional Economics; while doing this, we will analyze which ideological logic of basic assumptions, suggested by New Institutional Economics from the procedural individualism and limited rationalism assumptions to the process of market mechanism, distinguish it from Old Institutional Economics and we will analyze the assumptions that are claimed to be close to the assumptions of established economics. In this way, we will analyze New Institutional Economics on the basis of the question of “will it be able to present a different point of view to market mechanism-state relation?” by presenting market mechanism-state relation in New Institutional Economics, which exists similarly in all school of thought. So, we will attempt to analyze if New Institutional Economics, which reflects a different thought system, can present a new perspective to the market-state dilemma. As a result, by presenting the features of general economic structure of New Institutional Economics, which is sometimes claimed to come close to neo-classical economics, existence of solutions that can shed light on current basic economic problems will be analyzed.
