On the Relation of Political Science and Economics

Extract

That politics and economic life have much to do with each other is a remark matched in self-evidence only by the parallel observation that political science and economics are of mutual interest. All the more striking then is the difficulty one meets in attempting to state with precision how politics and economic life, or how political science and economics are related.

Consider for example the view that politics is the ceaseless competition of interested groups. Except under very rare conditions, as for instance the absence of division of labor, economic circumstances will preoccupy the waking hours of most men at most times. Their preoccupations will express themselves in the formation of organizations, or at least interested groups, with economic foundations. Politics, so far as “interest” means “economic interest” (which it does largely, but not exclusively), is the mutual adjustment of economic positions; and to that extent, the relation between politics and economic life seems to be that political activity grows out of economic activity. But the competition of the interests is, after all, an organized affair, carried out in accordance with rules called laws and constitutions. So perhaps the legal framework, the construction of which surely deserves to be called political, supervenes over the clashing of mere interests and even prescribes which interests may present themselves at the contest. Thus politics appears to be primary in its own right.