by From Lukas Bäuerle and current issue of RWER Pressing arguments for a paradigm shift in economics – based on an assessment of mainstream economics and its shortcomings – are out there for quite a while now. The emperor has been declared long dead in intellectual terms (Keen, 2001), but it is still firmly alive institutionally. This is the only reason why we still have to talk about it at all. Having said this, it goes without saying that the “intellectual monoculture” (Graupe, 2015) in economics as documented in bibliometric (Glötzl and Aigner, 2019) or network analyses (Ötsch, Pühringer, and Hirte, 2018) is not a matter of intellectual superiority (Fourcade, Ollion and Algan, 2015), but one of institutional power (Maeße et al., 2021). And this is one of the most important points,
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from Lukas Bäuerle and current issue of RWER
Pressing arguments for a paradigm shift in economics – based on an assessment of mainstream economics and its shortcomings – are out there for quite a while now. The emperor has been declared long dead in intellectual terms (Keen, 2001), but it is still firmly alive institutionally. This is the only reason why we still have to talk about it at all. Having said this, it goes without saying that the “intellectual monoculture” (Graupe, 2015) in economics as documented in bibliometric (Glötzl and Aigner, 2019) or network analyses (Ötsch, Pühringer, and Hirte, 2018) is not a matter of intellectual superiority (Fourcade, Ollion and Algan, 2015), but one of institutional power (Maeße et al., 2021). And this is one of the most important points, where neoliberalism firmly intersects with the discipline of economics. For the neoliberal thought collective (Mirowski and Plehwe, 2009) has contributed in significant terms to the institutional stabilization of a specific kind of economic thinking, regardless of its adequacy to empirical phenomena and the needs of all stakeholders involved in economies around the globe. But economics has never developed into a synonym for neoliberalism. Over the course of the second half of the 20th century up to today, there has been an ongoing struggle against the discipline’s occupation. This struggle is possibly getting closer to a moment of decision. A “Great Mindshift” (Göpel, 2016), overcoming a fundamentally unsustainable paradigm, could be imminent: both in economics as in society. From the discipline’s historical genesis of the last 100 years, we can learn that any paradigm shift in economics will not just have to outline a different way of thinking, but the practical and institutional conditions of possibility to provide these innovations academic as well as extra-academic air to come and stay alive. The quest for a post-neoliberal economics is not just an intellectual, but a fundamentally institutional one.
If this is the challenge, I propose to use the spaces critical economists have been able to gain or maintain for a pragmatic and transformative discourse on the (economic) challenges the global society is facing in the 21st century. Let us turn the page and switch from critiques of the soon-to-be-past to the intellectual and practical co-creation of economic futures worth living in. Let us overcome the discipline’s fundamental indifference towards an ever-changing world full of pressing issues and start caring for them. In this vein it proves to be a promising sign that there is a growing network in societies around the globe eager for concrete proposals aiming at a fundamental reconfiguration of economic processes (Fridays for Future 2021; Together for Future 2021). Both aspects of the specific historic moment we are living through – escalating socio-ecological crises and a public increasingly understanding the need for fundamental economic transformation – should encourage us to foster a new self-confident economic discourse and its institutionalization; a discourse that invites all sorts of players with all kinds of academic and extra-academic backgrounds and affiliations willing to join the actual game to come along. Having contributed in building a new university from scratch along with fellow colleagues, I have strong reason to believe that there will be a path for new academic and economic realities ̶ if we just walk it. read more