Economic delusions and denial

Date

2009

Authors

Kouzmin, A.
Witt, M.T.
deHaven Smith, L.
Thorne, K.

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Administrative Theory and Praxis, 2009; 31(3):424-431

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Abstract

The ontology and epistemology of neoclassical economics exhibit little restraint in ideological and imperial extension to nonmarket application. The colonization of public administration by economic canon is a vexing epistemological issue, demanding critical reckoning of the "tribe," and chorus, of economic "fellow travelers" marching to yet another sect of economics and invoking a creedlike economic parable in a devoted, liturgical incantation of the virtues of the "free market." Public choice ideology sees the political arena through essentially pluralist spectacles, as disjoined discourses and contestation between interest groups resulting in significantly poor allocation decisions, politicians as "log rollers," interest groups as merchants of illusions, the media as manipulating and manipulated, and the populace as dumbly subjected and subordinated. While heralding the coming of the "multitude," effacing complicity with holographic delusionaring of the economic remains a priority. Critical scholarship, reckoning with the rent-seeking-induced chimera of Homo economicus, is long overdue.

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Copyright 2009 Public Administration Theory Network.

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