The Analysis of Welfare State Reform: Why the “Quasi-Markets” Narrative Is Descriptively Inadequate and Misleading

Abstract

ion in scientific investigation is inevitable. Maki considered that unrealisticness is unavoidable in the construction of theories (and hence scientific discourse); thus, for Maki, a significant concern is about the functions of unrealisticness in the orientation of theorizing, either driven by ontological considerations as to how to draw a line between what is believed or hypothesized to be essential and what is believed or hypothesized to be inessential. (Maki 1994a, 253) In this regard, Tony Lawson (1997) and Jochen Runde (1998) offered considerable insight in alerting analysts to the vitally important distinction to be drawn between This content downloaded from 157.55.39.149 on Wed, 14 Dec 2016 04:58:32 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms Welfare State Reform: The Quasi-Markets Narrative 779 abstraction and idealization. The former refers to the omission, ceteris absentibus, of aspectsion and idealization. The former refers to the omission, ceteris absentibus, of aspects of causal history considered to be inessential (the Aristotlean-Thomistic interpretation of abstraction). Idealization invokes entities that exist only in the realm of ideas (Runde 1998, 159), or theoretical isolations (Maki 1992), or some forms of ideal types (Commons 1961; Weber 1949). Thomas Boylan and Paschal O'Gorman's (1995) notion of descriptive adequacy is also helpful in appreciating the importance of abstracting inessential features in theoretical analysis. For them a descriptively adequate theory describes contingent entities and events, contingent regularities among those events, and contingent causes of events. Their notion of descriptive adequacy is grounded on the perspective that economics is a profoundly descriptive, or empirical, science. They argued, [D]espite the fact that economic actions have a hermeneutical dimension, a central task for economics is to accurately describe economic actions, their institutional and social settings, and the manner in which these institutional and social settings have changed in historical time. (165, emphasis added). Boylan and O'Gorman's emphasis on the importance of descriptive adequacy in economics resonates with Maki's discussion of veristic realisticness. As noted, Miki usefully distinguished between varieties of realisticness. Of principal importance to the discussion here is Miki's (1992, 1994a) conception of veristic realisticness, which alludes truly to features they make reference to. Therefore, there must be some empirical correspondence, comprehensiveness, and concreteness. For Maki comprehensiveness refers to the of the excluded field of analysis relative to the size of the isolated field. In this matter he argues that traditional institutional economics provides representations of the economy that are more realistic than neoclassical representations in that, besides market relations mediated by prices, they encompass factors such as cultural habituation and social power (Miki 1992, 321) In making this characterization it is discernible that Maki's conception of comprehension is not the same as generalization. This is also the case with concreteness. Maki (1994b) termed this as a form of de-isolation, in other words, of decreasing the abstractness and generalization of a theory: in this respect context is of central importance (Schutz 1967). Historical referents are a crucial aspect of veristically realistic approaches. The compatibility with institutionalist inclinations that history is the sin qua non of appreciating economics is confirmed. By contrast other forms of realisticness may possess less empirical correspondence; for example, referential realisticness, which refers to depictions that refer to real entities, and representational realisticness represent features had by their real referents (Maki 1992). By contrast, This content downloaded from 157.55.39.149 on Wed, 14 Dec 2016 04:58:32 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms