Power of Economics without Power in Economics?

Power relations dominate most social and economic processes. Despite its significance, however, the concept of structural power relations is often neglected in standard economics, which often confines itself to dissecting an idealized, abstract world, wherein power dynamics are usually seen as somewhat outside the economic realm (e.g. Rothschild 2002, Wolff & Resnick 2012). But can economics be powerful in understanding, explaining and, ideally, tackling the multiple crises of our time without embedding the concept of power in its analysis?

We suggest that the lack of consideration or insufficient engagement with power-related aspects in mostly standard approaches has far-reaching implications, especially in policy-making. Policies that neglect important social phenomena such as structural power relations, might not be fit to address current crises. As Chirat (2018, p. 38) argues, "[…] masking the relationship of power behind impersonal market processes is not a neutral position." Bourne et al. (2024) use the metaphor of a “ghost” to describe the hidden and often unrevealed power structures of the past that continue to “haunt” and influence the present, perpetuating the continuous persistence of structural power, for instance in the form of racism, colonialism and sexism within society.

A significant challenge in the analysis of power, however, is the often-vague definition of power and the lack of a clear categorization of the various concepts of power used in different paradigmatic and economic approaches. The standard economic treatment of discrimination can serve as an example. Against Gary Becker’s taste-based discrimination account that considers discrimination as an individualistic and accidental phenomenon that would disappear in competitive markets due to the costs it imposes on the transaction, the Stratification Economics approach suggests that discrimination is one of the ways in which the privileged perform and maintain their power position and that it does not disappear in competitive settings but persists in different forms. Thus, Stratification Economics perceives discrimination as a structural issue with a systematic character (Burnazoglu et al. 2022a, 2022b), while for Becker’s classical account it is an individualistic one that occurs for one time on one occasion.

We can define individualistic power as a-political, a-historical, frictional and accidental power that is seen to happen for one time, on one occasion in a world of otherwise free individual exchange relations. Structural power offers an opposite view of the world: it is systematic, political, historical and reinforced by formal and informal institutions and institutional structures in a way in which their presence persists even if their appearance changes. It can be indirect and hidden like the ‘ghost’ in Bourne et al. (2024) or more visible such as the historical injustice that the racial wealth gap in the US displays. Thus, individualistic power centres on the free and autonomous individual and is often blind to institutional context, while structural power is about the political and historical context and its sticky institutions. Structural power focuses on the “embedded” individual and provides a lens to study institutional structures with norms and rationales conferred upon the individual that do not always lie within the scope of their actions (Martins 2022, Lawson 2012, 2019).

This collection reopens the discussion of power in economics. It originated in the 2023 EAEPE Pre-Conference that was held in Leeds, UK during which we hosted talks by expert scholars on the role of power, and an interactive workshop on the definition of the concept of power and its role in subfields of economics. With this collection, we invite studies that reintroduce concepts of power to the economic discipline. Contributions may focus on different interpretations, definitions and conceptualizations of power and on highlighting the importance of structural power in various economic fields. The ambition of this collection is twofold: to advance research on power in addressing pressing questions and challenges, and to critically examine concepts of power from methodological and philosophical perspectives.

Contributions could address but are not limited to questions like:

• How can the study of power improve economic research on modern crises?

• What are forms of structural power and how can we define and analyze them?

• What are different interpretations, definitions, and conceptualizations of power across various theoretical frameworks and contexts within the discipline of Economics?

• How does structural power alter the methodologies, interpretations, and policy recommendations in economic research?

• How do different economic approaches incorporate or neglect structural power, and what are the consequences of these choices for their methodologies, interpretations and policy recommendations?

All selected contributions will go through a full peer review process according to the usual standards of REPE.

References

Bourne, C., Haiven, M., Montgomerie, J., & Gilbert, P. (2024). "Financial capital and ghosts of empire," Journal of Cultural Economy, 1-15.

Burnazoglu, M., Kesting, S., Obeng-Odoom, F., Schneebaum, A. (2022a). "Editorial introduction: symposium on inequalities, social stratification, and stratification economics." Review of Evolutionary Political Economy 3(2), 375–377.

Burnazoglu, M., Kesting, S., Obeng-Odoom, F., Schneebaum, A. (2022b). "Introduction: advancing stratification economics—methodological perspectives and policy applications," Review of Evolutionary Political Economy 3(3), 457–461.

Chirat, A. (2018). "When Galbraith frightened conservatives: Power in economics, economists’ power, and scientificity," Journal of Economic Issues, 52(1), 31-56.

Lawson, T. (2012). "Ontology and the study of social reality: emergence, organisation, community, power, social relations, corporations, artefacts and money," Cambridge Journal of Economics 36 (2), 345–85.

Lawson, T. (2019). The Nature of Social Reality: Issues in Social Ontology, London and New York, Routledge.

Martins, N. O. (2022). "Social positioning and the pursuit of power," Cambridge Journal of Economics. 46, 2, 275-291.

Rothschild, K. W. (2002). "The absence of power in contemporary economic theory," Journal of Socio-economics, 31(5), 433-433.

Wolff, R. D., & Resnick, S. A. (2012). Contending economic theories: neoclassical, Keynesian, and Marxian. MIT Press.