The title of this blog is "In Search of Political Economy." This is the main idea, and in fact has been a running theme in my life for some time now. To explain the idea: I am engaged in an ongoing intellectual journey to understand and explain the relationship between the political and economic spheres of human existence. This blog exists as a notebook for that journey.
Most of my research thus far has consisted less of political economy than of what one could call social economics. I visited Peru on a Fulbright fellowship in 2006-7, gathering data on coffee cooperatives and the small farms that make up those cooperatives. I've generated some basic results from that data, which I'll share with you in detail in a later post. The main take-home message of my research is that social relationships create an economic impact: coffee growers who are more tightly networked among themselves are in a better position to participate in cooperatives, and enjoy the economic benefits that cooperatives bring. I showed this by demonstrating empirically that coffee growers who participate in mutual aid networks are able to sell a greater proportion of their product to the cooperative - and retain a higher net income due to lower labor costs.
Very well. So what? These results beg a few philosophical questions. First of all, what factors determine how well socially networked a coffee grower - never mind, any human being - will be? Second of all, what are the political implications of the result? People who are well organized socially tend to do better economically: no secret there! But pessimism sets in: don't people who are well organized socially also tend to do well politically, i.e., form effective political parties, press their economic and social interests, raise viable candidates for office, etc.? Hence, don't all forms of social organization reproduce some form of class structure or another, through both economic and political processes? In turn, don't class structures express themselves in part through everyday social relationships - who is willing to cooperative with whom, who shares information with whom, et cetera? Hence, instead of simply applauding when we see a group of people cooperating, shouldn't we also ask ourselves who is excluded from participating in cooperative relationships - and why? And in limiting ourselves to the micro- and meso-spheres (in my case, one cooperative and its constituent households), aren't we ignoring the bigger picture of how individual organizations, themselves composed of relationships among individuals, households, and groups, in turn compose larger social and political structures?
For these reasons, my thoughts have turned back towards my original objective: political economy. There are many political economies in the world today, and many academic disciplines that claim to be authentic political economy. I'll pick three as examples. First, there is the neoclassical/neoliberal political economy which asserts the inevitability of rent-seeking by political groups and the impossibility of government intervention to improve upon economic outcomes generated by "free" markets. Second, there is a variant of neoclassical political economy which rests upon the "median voter" theorem and attempts to predict the path of government policies based on this theorem. Third, there is the Marxian tradition which advances both a critique of the other two schools and a proposal for another political economy, based on the identification of state power with the interests of dominant economic classes.
There are of course many other subtle variants on these themes, incorporating game theory, et cetera. What I am now proposing is a search for insight that reads and critiques all these schools with as much care as possible, while paying as close attention as possible to current events and issues such as the employment crisis, climate change, and international debt. What I'm also proposing is to offer my own readings of selected works, and welcome the comments of anyone who chooses to chime in. Essentially, this blog represents my search for political economy. So far, my search has found me embedded in a kind of social and cultural economics that raises many more questions than it answers. My next step is to begin reading - slowly and carefully - more explicit works of political economy and reflecting on them.
A note about me: I am a Ph.D student in Economics at University of Massachusetts, Amherst. We are a heterodox department, meaning that we do not adhere to the strict disciplinary and methodological divisions that most other economics departments do. That said, I have grown to appreciate a certain methodological rigor, provided that the practitioner remains aware that there is something beyond it. All models require closure, but all closures are provisional and based on the best available information, or some gloss on this information. All glosses on information are biased to some degree; all information is imperfect, hence all closures are imperfect, hence all models are imperfect. Given those basic caveats, we can model freely, and critique each other's models freely, and in the process generate as much insight as possible.
I welcome all serious critiques, proposals, and recommendations. Onwards!
