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How Should One Study Economic Policy-Making? Four Characters in Search of an Object

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 June 2011

Mark Kesselman
Mark Kesselman
Affiliation:
Columbia University
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Abstract

By focusing on some major contributions to political economy and economic policy-making within advanced capitalism, among the richest subfields of the discipline, the article seeks to analyze the relation between structural constraints and political choice. With the partial exception of Politics against Markets, all the works reviewed here seek to interpret rather than change the world. Attending to the fine grain of historical detail, they insightfully describe important political developments. They provide fine accounts of the interplay of structure and agency in concrete historical settings. By developing impressive theory to illuminate these developments, the works considerably advance our knowledge of the way that political forces affect economic policy outcomes. However, they generally share three important and interrelated shortcomings: they do not adequately conceptualize the structural dynamics of democratic capitalism; they adopt an economistic perspective concerning the organization of interests and social identities; and they confine attention to what is and fail to consider what might be.

Type
Review Article
Information
World Politics , Volume 44 , Issue 4 , July 1992 , pp. 645 - 672
Copyright
Copyright © Trustees of Princeton University 1992

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References

1 One might contrast this with Roberto Mangabeira Unger, False Necessity: Anti-Necessi-tarian Social Theory in the Service of Radical Democracy, pt. 1 of Politics: A Work in Constructive Social Theory (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987). This audacious if flawed work suggests an alternative approach to political economy. Considerations of space preclude it being analyzed here. See Kesselman, “What's Wrong with Separate Tables? Or, ‘Whose Restaurant?’ ” (Unpublished manuscript).

2 The Three Worlds of Welfare Capitalism pulls away from Marxism; it is closer to Gour evitch's societal-centered approach. However, as in Politics against Markets, Esping-Andersen continues, in The Three Worlds of Welfare Capitalism, to explore the ways that state policy shapes social structure.

3 Giddens develops the concept of structuration in many works; see Giddens, , Central Problems of Social Theory: Action, Structure and Contradiction in Social Analysis (London: lan, 1979)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and idem, The Constitution of Society: Outline of the Theory of Structuration (Berke ley: University of California Press, 1984)Google Scholar. In contrast to the other works analyzed here, The Changing Architecture of Politics does not focus primarily on economic policy-making and outcomes. Cerny is primarily interested in the structuration process, not in economic policy. However, the book does develop a framework for analyzing state economic intervention and policy.

4 Gourevitch, , “The Second Image Reversed,” International Organization 32 (Autumn 1978)Google Scholar.

5 For important contributions, see work by members of the French regulation school, for example, Boyer, Robert, ed., The Searchfor Labor Market Flexibility: The European Economies in Transition (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1988)Google Scholar. See also Piore, Michael and Sabel, Charles, The Second Industrial Divide: Possibilitiesfor Prosperity (New York: Basic Books, 1984)Google Scholar.

6 The classic analyses of this issue are by Louis Althusser and Nicos Poulantzas.

7 March, James G. and Olsen, Johan P., Rediscovering Institutions: The Organizational Basis of Politics (New York: Free Press, 1989)Google Scholar.

8 Hall, , ed., The Political Power of Economic Ideas: Keynesianism across Nations (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989), 380 fn. 43Google Scholar

9 I agree with Hall's assessment of Mitterrand but strongly disagree that Thatcher failed to achieve radical policy initiatives, as witness, for example, the extensive changes in such important areas as deregulation, privatization, and labor relations.

10 Indeed, four of the five scholars that Hall cites on the page where this passage occurs were sympathetic to neo-Marxism, and the fifth (Charles Lindblom) was deeply influenced by it.

11 Hall does not carry his institutional analysis far enough. Consider the French Ministry of Finance. He ignores important conflicts between the Treasury Directorate and other directorates within the ministry, as well as the Treasury's battles with other economic policymaking agencies. See the fine review of a number of works on France by Ashford, Douglas E., “In Search of French Planning: Ideas and History at work,” West European Politics 11 (July 1988)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

12 Hall (fn. 8) explores another influence on economic policy—the power of ideas—in his edited volume. He observes on Keynesianism:

To neglect the role of ideas in political economy … is to miss an important component of the economic and political worlds. It is ideas, in the form of economic theories and the policies developed from them, that enables national leaders to chart a course through turbulent economic times, and ideas about what is efficient, expedient, and just that motivates the movement from one line of policy to another, (p. 361)

13 Where page numbers are given without specifying the book, the reference is to Politics against Markets.

14 I do not deal in detail with The Three Worlds of Welfare Capitalism in this review.

15 See, e.g., Tufte, Edward, Political Control of the Economy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1978)Google Scholar.

16 The phrase “social democracy as a historical phenomenon” is Adam Przeworski's. See Przeworski, , Capitalism and Social Democracy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, chap. 1. Przeworski discerns a logic of deradicalization associated with social democracy that is squarely opposed to the logic of escalating demands discerned by Esping-Andersen.

17 O'Connor, James, The Fiscal Crisis of the State (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1973)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

18 See Sainsbury, Diane, “Swedish Social Democracy in Transition: The Party's Record in the 1980s and the Challenge of the 1990s,” West European Politics 14 (July 1991)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

19 They are more aware of the fact that, as Gourevitch in particular stresses, democracy enlarges the possibilities for variable outcomes; that is, it enlarges the latitude for political choice.

20 In my view he correctly suggests that “the principal reason has to do with the limited means available (within any kind of institutional framework that has, so far, been tried in capitalism) to channel zero-sum conflicts into workable bargains” (The Three Worlds, 164).

21 The best work is Block, Fred, Revising Stale Theory: Essays in Politics and Postindustrial-ization (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1987)Google Scholar; Esping-Andersen, Politics against Markets; O'Connor (fn. 17); Offe, Claus, Contradictions of the Welfare State (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1984)Google Scholar; and Przeworski (fn. 16).

22 This is the major theme of neo-Marxist works of the 1970s and 1980s, explored best in O'Connor (fn. 17); and Offe (fn. 21).

23 Bowles, and Gintis, , “The Crisis of Liberal Democratic Capitalism: The Case of the United States,” Politics and Society 11, no. 1 (1982)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and idem, Democracy and Capitalism (New York: Basic Books, 1986)Google Scholar. See also Bowles, Samuel, Gordon, David, and Weisskopf, Thomas, Beyond the Wasteland: A Democratic Alternative to Economic Decline (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday/Anchor, 1983)Google Scholar.

24 Maier, Charles S., ed., The Changing Boundaries of the Political (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

25 Cerny represents another exception, in that he considers a wide range of activities subsumed under the concept of state structuration. But he apparently accepts the legitimacy of the traditional notion of the economy.

26 Reasons of space preclude analyzing Unger (fn. 1), whose aim is precisely to develop a radically democratic political and economic alternative. See also Piore and Sabel (fn. 5).

27 See Unger (fn. 1) for a consideration of how radical democratic methods can be used to minimize the tyranny of structure while avoiding the nightmare of chaos.

28 I infer this from the last sentence of p. 178. It may not be Cerny's position.