The contemporary non-liberal turn in economists: emergence of neoliberalism and post-neoliberalism in Hirschman's vision

Abstract

In this paper I address the following question. How might Albert O. Hirschman have us theorize the role of the economics profession in the illiberal impulses that have taken root in so many parts of the world? I argue that Hirschman would see the profession as significantly implicated in having created conditions that produced the unfolding democratic crisis. This would not be due to the profession’s attachment to or endorsement of any single economic model, whether it be Keynesianism, neoliberalism, or any other model. Instead Hirschman would have rooted the culpability of the economics profession in its idealization and pursuit of institutional and policy coherence—that is, the pursuit of theoretical purity and the effort to realize that purity in practice. That was the project he closely tied to the hubris of the economic profession. And it is on the need for humility, patience, and recognition of the epistemic limitations of the profession that Hirschman was perhaps most insightful and original.