Some remarks on ‘economic imperialism’ and international political economy

Abstract

'Economic imperialism' celebrates a double meaning. The first concerns the phenomena of colonialism and neocolonialism. The second refers to the attempt to extend the core ideas of neoclassical economics to cover social science as a whole. In this second meaning 'economic imperialism' implies that the core assumptions of neoclassical economics can and should be applied to a wide variety of fields of study, including politics, international relations, sociology, anthropology, psychology, history and even biology, as well as economics itself. It is based on the belief that the idea of 'rational economic man' is appropriate to social science as a whole. This essay is concerned with 'economic imperialism' in the latter sense. It is written at a time when neoclassical economics has pushed all alternative paradigms to the fringes of its home discipline. Almost without exception, the prestigious economics departments in the world are dominated, and many exclusively populated, by neoclassical economists. All the core, high-status journals in economics are edited by economists of that same persuasion. Neoclassical dominance is most severe in the Anglo-American world but it is not confined to it. Today, the presuppositions of 'rational economic man' dominate the subject to an extent that has never been experienced before. Furthermore, the neoclassical approach is making itself felt outside economics. In 1957 Anthony Downs published An Economic Theory of Democracy in which the neoclassical presumption of rational choice was applied to democratic political systems. But it was not until the 1970s that the rational choice approach became firmly established in political science. Although neoclassical ideas do not dominate politics to the degree that they do economics, the paradigm of rational choice permeates much of Anglo-American political science and has a major influence in the field of international relations.