Economia Política / Political Economy

Sessao inaugural - Boaventura Sousa Santos

Economics is now undergoing a process of transformation driven by the emergence of new research programs, which not only make important departures from standard neoclassical economics, but also draw on contents from other fields of research. The proliferation and consolidation of the emergent research programs carry a transformative potential insofar as the incorporation of the ‘non- economic’ may impact on the methodological, conceptual and theoretical character of economics. Expectations arise regarding the emergence of a new orthodoxy capable of replacing the old neoclassical program... See separate PDF for full abstract.

My contribution to the Plenary Session on The Revival of Political Economy will include a discussion of the main core general principles that I have been elaborating on in various forums and journals for the past 5-10 years. Soon this work will emerge as a book, Principles of Political Economy—Applied to Contemporary World Problems. The main principles discussed here will include (a) historical specificity, (b) heterogeneous agents and groups, (c) circular and cumulative causation, (d) contradiction, (e) risk and uncertainty, and (f) uneven development. (There are other principles but these are discussed elsewhere.) These principles are used as core concepts and methodological tools with which to embed political economy problems and policies into the historical juncture, generating a social perspective of the role of human beings and other species, but including geography, in a holistic science of provisioning through protecting and regenerating community assets for present and future generations. Examples of how these principles may be used to example specific problems such as financial crises, climate change, etc, are given throughout the session.

Classical political economy explains economic activity in terms of the reproduction and distribution of a surplus produced by labour. This classical framework, which underpins the work of authors from Adam Smith to Karl Marx, was abandoned by orthodox theory after the marginalist revolution. Alfred Marshall, the founder of the Cambridge economic tradition, attempted to provide a view that would unify classical political economy and the marginalist revolution, leading to an approach which was termed as neoclassical economics. However, the marginalist elements of neoclassical economics became increasingly more important than the contributions of the classical political economists, and economics became known as the study of optimising behaviour under scarcity, rather than the study of the reproduction of a surplus, while resorting extensively to mathematical modelling.

The flows of energy and materials in the world economy have never been so large as today. This article argues that this increased social metabolism is causing more and more conflicts on resource extraction and waste disposal. This gives rise to a movement for environmental justice around the world. The words "environmental justice" were first used in the United States in the early 1980s for local complaints against "environmental racism", i.e. the disproportionate pollution burdens in areas primarily inhabited by disadvantaged ethic groups but the term is now applied to spontaneous movements and EJOs anywhere in the world (and to the networks or coalitions they form across borders) resisting extractive industries and complaining against pollution and climate change... See separate PDF for full abstract.

La crise contemporaine est aussi celle du paradigme économique dominant des deux dernières décennies. Sa perte de crédibilité est certes beaucoup moins dramatique que les conséquences économiques et sociales de la récession de 2008-2009 mais l’absence d’une construction alternative risque d’hypothéquer les chances d’une sortie de crise. En effet, si persiste la configuration antérieure au sein du champ des théories économiques standards, s’accroît la probabilité que les stratégies, qu’elles suggèrent, conduisent en fait à la répétition d’une crise de même type, plus grave encore puisque s’accumuleraient de nouveaux déséquilibres associés à une relance par le crédit, non plus privé mais essentiellement public.

This presentation has two parts. Initially, I will gather the major arguments (or variables) that can help us understand the persistency of variety in the contemporary world and develop a comprehensive picture that incorporates differentiation of economic landscapes. This will require selecting the following variables: time, space, institutions, political conflicts and agreements, refraction and national strategies. The exploration of these arguments will lead to a discussion of the concept of institutional based economic and political strategies. The central idea is that such strategies involve and depend on a collection of actors and mechanisms of economic coordination, with a specific role for public and private action... See separate PDF for full abstract.

Not only is the global economy in shambles, but so too is the economic paradigm of the efficient market hypothesis which was dominant in the years before the crisis. Paul Krugman asked: “How did Economists Get it so Wrong? What happened to the economics profession and where does it go from here?” (NYT 2009). The same question can be asked about Political Science/Political Economy. Theoretically we have stripped the state of the capacity to act. In the final analysis, it was the state which bailed out the banking sector and saved the economy from a global meltdown. Since the collapse of the Fordist production regime, political science tried to copy the rational expectation model of human behavior that gained dominance in economics. In many respects the mainstream in political science/political economy has become equally doctrinaire in believing in the self-regulating market myth and market efficiency... See separate PDF for full abstract.

This paper develops a perspective on the political economy as an institutional regime dependent on sets of public policies whose character depends, in turn, on appropriate electoral coalitions. It grounds that perspective in an analysis of how the post-war political economies of the developed democracies changed from the 1950s and 1960s to the 1990s and 2000s and then uses this perspective to explain the responses of several contemporary political economies to the ‘great recession’. Building on work in the regulation school of economics, I argue that the economic formula of the initial post-war decades, organized around Fordist production and Keynesian policies, was the reflection of a political formula built on class compromise in the electoral and industrial arenas... see separate pdf with full abstract.