Two Accounts of the Relation Between Political Economy and Economics (And Why It Matters Which Account Is Better)

In a providential account of the changing relation between political economy and economics, the late nineteenth-century development of economics is identified with the rational choice model; and the revival of political economy in the late twentieth century comes with the export of this model to politics and the other social sciences. An alternative prudential account locates the revival of political economy with a significant qualification to the rational choice model. This qualification restores an eighteenth- and nineteenth-century view of rule-following to human agency. This essay sets out these accounts and draws the conclusion that the choice of one over the other matters, not least for the practice of contemporary politics.