scholarly journals Economics as the scientization of politics

2021 ◽  
Vol Volume XIV Issue 1-2 (Symposium: How economists are...) ◽  
Author(s):  
Jon Mulberg
Keyword(s):  
New Deal ◽  
Social Order ◽  
Institutional Economics ◽  
The Political ◽  
Reflexive Modernity

This paper uses Beck's concept of reflexive modernity, and a Foucauldian approach, to critique the positivist philosophy associated with contemporary conventional economics, and to show its inadequacy for the environmental emergency. The paper suggests economics is not neutral but performs an ideological function in justifying the political and social order. Economics can be deconstructed by tracing its history, thereby laying bare its philosophical and political roots. The environmental debate repeats past debates of the 1920s and 30s. By employing the 'subjugated' institutional economics approaches economics can be redefined, and the path to a truly Green New Deal can be unearthed.

The Political Economy of Italy's Decline

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrea Lorenzo Capussela
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Tax Evasion ◽  
Social Order ◽  
Economic History ◽  
Multiple Equilibria ◽  
Institutional Economics ◽  
Coordination Games ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Accountability ◽  
Private Goods

This book offers an interpretation of Italy’s decline, which began two decades before the Great Recession. It argues that its deeper roots lie in the political economy of growth. This interpretation is illustrated through a discussion of Italy’s political and economic history since its unification, in 1861. The emphasis is placed on the country’s convergence to the productivity frontier and TFP performance, and on the evolution of its social order and institutions. The lens through which its history is reviewed, to illuminate the origins and evolution of the current constraints to growth, is drawn from institutional economics and Schumpeterian growth theory. It is exemplified by analysing two alternative reactions to the insufficient provision of public goods: an opportunistic one—employing tax evasion, corruption, or clientelism as means to appropriate private goods—and one based on enforcing political accountability. From the perspective of ordinary citizens and firms such social dilemmas can typically be modelled as coordination games, which have multiple equilibria. Self-interested rationality can thus lead to a spiral, in which several mutually reinforcing vicious circles lead society onto an inefficient equilibrium characterized by low political accountability and weak rule of law. The book follows the gradual setting in of this spiral, despite an ambitious attempt at institutional reform, in 1962–4, and its resumption after a severe endogenous shock, in 1992–4. It concludes that innovative ideas can overcome the constraints posed by that spiral, and ease the country’s shift onto a fairer and more efficient equilibrium.

The Conceptual Framework: Growth, Institutions, and Social Orders

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrea Lorenzo Capussela
Keyword(s):  
Open Access ◽  
Conceptual Framework ◽  
Social Order ◽  
Institutional Economics ◽  
Theoretical Framework ◽  
Institutional Reforms ◽  
Reversible Process ◽  
Main Determinant ◽  
Social Orders

This chapter lays out one part of the theoretical framework of the book, drawn from institutional economics. This literature maintains that institutions are the main determinant of long-term growth, and that to remain ‘appropriate’ institutions must evolve in synchrony with an economy’s progress through the stages of its development. Their evolution depends on a society’s openness to political creative destruction. Limited-access social orders tend to constrain it, to safeguard elites’ rents, and typically undermine progressive institutional reforms, breaking that synchrony. The transition from that social order to the open-access one is an endogenous and reversible process, in which inefficient institutions, which allow elites to extract rents, coexist with appropriate ones, which constrain their power and make it contestable. The hypothesis is advanced that Italy has not yet completed this transition, and that the tension between its efficient and inefficient institutions can endogenously generate shocks, which open opportunities for equilibrium shifts.

scholarly journals What are markets? Selected market theories under genuine uncertainty in comparison

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ute Schmiel ◽  
Hendrik Sander
Keyword(s):  
Institutional Economics ◽  
Institutional Arrangements ◽  
New Institutional Economics ◽  
The Political ◽  
Market Outcomes ◽  
Dominant Form ◽  
Market Order ◽  
Cultural Approach ◽  
Common Interests ◽  
Critical Rationalist

AbstractSince market economies are the dominant form of regulating economic action all over the world, the question arises how markets are conceived theoretically. Answering this is relevant because we need to know how existing and hypothetical markets work in general, what they “can do”, and how one can improve the market order. There are three different market approaches that consider genuine uncertainty. According to the new institutional economics approach, markets are institutions that increase boundedly rational actors’ utility. The markets-as-institutional-arrangements approach denies that markets maximize or minimize market outcomes and argues that they enable harmony between individual and common interests. According to the political-cultural approach, markets are political arenas with conflicts between the relevant actors. Deciding reasonably for a theory requires answering whether one theory is more adequate than another. Since literature has not answered this so far, the present paper deals with this issue from a critical-rationalist perspective. It finds that the institutional economics approach is not adequate because its assumptions contradict reality and each other. In contrast, the markets-as-institutional-arrangements approach and the political-cultural approach fulfill critical-rationalist requirements. Therefore, the paper compares them and finds that there are reasons to prefer the political-cultural approach and to interpret the markets-as-institutional-arrangements approach as its special case. Referring to the political-cultural approach has different consequences for analyzing and improving the market order. Taking a political-cultural view implies, e.g., not only focusing on desirable social values and market rules but also on the relevance of interpretative frameworks and power.

scholarly journals Bruno Leoni’s Concept of Law and Representation in The Cyber Age: A Cybernetic Model

2020 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 56-65
Author(s):  
Mario De Benedetti
Keyword(s):  
Political Theory ◽  
Social Order ◽  
Information Society ◽  
The Political ◽  
Digital Information ◽  
Political Arena ◽  
Cybernetic Model ◽  
Norbert Wiener ◽  
Law And Politics ◽  
Concept Of Law

AbstractThe purpose of this article is to contextualize Bruno Leoni’s political theory within the Digital Information Society, a new dimension of public participation in the political arena and a sign of the democratic transition through new forms of involvement by public opinion. In particular, the evolution of the Information Society will be briefly examined starting from the studies of Fritz Machlup, considered its progenitor, to pass to the examination of the Leonian concept of law and politics in the technological society, with reference to Norbert Wiener and Karl Deutsch’s cybernetic theory. This paper will attempt to describe the evolutive process of political participation in democratic society by reinterpreting the thought of Bruno Leoni concerning Democracy, the State and the homo telematicus in the digital social order.

Second and Third Sessions of the Seventy-fifth Congress, 1937–38

1938 ◽  
Vol 32 (6) ◽  
pp. 1099-1123
Author(s):  
O. R. Altman
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
New Deal ◽  
Political Party ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Political ◽  
Entire Country

The election returns of November, 1936, seemed to portray a democracy strongly united behind a leader and a program of action. It appeared that Franklin D. Roosevelt and his New Deal platform had been endorsed by nearly every interest and section in the United States, and an overwhelmingly Democratic Congress selected to enact into law those principles for which he “had just begun to fight.” Within six months, however, that unity started to disintegrate. Congress began to dissect carefully the program which the President proclaimed to be both beneficial for the entire country and politically prudent for the political party which he headed.

scholarly journals Security expertise and international hierarchy: the case of ‘The Asia-Pacific Epistemic Community’

2017 ◽  
Vol 43 (3) ◽  
pp. 494-515 ◽  
Author(s):  
Björn Jerdén
Keyword(s):  
East Asia ◽  
Social Order ◽  
International Security ◽  
East Asian ◽  
Epistemic Community ◽  
Political Order ◽  
Asia Pacific ◽  
The Political ◽  
Regional Stability ◽  
General Explanation

AbstractMany states partially relinquish sovereignty in return for physical protection from a more powerful state. Mainstream theory on international hierarchies holds that such decisions are based on rational assessments of the relative qualities of the political order being offered. Such assessments, however, are bound to be contingent, and as such a reflection of the power to shape understandings of reality. Through a study of the remarkably persistent US-led security hierarchy in East Asia, this article puts forward the concept of the ‘epistemic community’ as a general explanation of how such understandings are shaped and, hence, why states accept subordinate positions in international hierarchies. The article conceptualises a transnational and multidisciplinary network of experts on international security – ‘The Asia-Pacific Epistemic Community’ – and demonstrates how it operates to convince East Asian policymakers that the current US-led social order is the best choice for maintaining regional ‘stability’.

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