Thinking Like an Economist: How Efficiency Replaced Equality in U.S. Public Policy with Elizabeth Popp Berman is Associate Professor of Organizational Studies and Sociology at the University of Michigan

CEE GENERAL SEMINAR

Sciences Po, exclusively on Zoom (you will receive the link of this seminar after your registration), compulsory registration

Between the 1960s and the 1980s, an economic style of reasoning—one focused on efficiency, incentives, choice, and competition—became prominent within U.S. public policy, including in domains that were once not seen as particularly “economic”. Drawing on historical research on policy domains ranging from environmental to welfare to antitrust policy, I show how particular intellectual communities introduced and disseminated this style of reasoning, and examine its lasting political effects. As the values of economics—especially various forms of efficiency—became institutionalized through law, regulation and organizational change, it became harder for competing claims about rights, universalism, equity, and power to gain purchase. While economic reasoning had the potential to conflict with conservative as well as liberal values, in practice it was particularly constraining for the Democratic left—the implications of which continue to be felt.

This talk will illustrate this larger argument by looking at the case of antitrust, or competition policy, in which the economic style of reasoning was institutionalized through law schools, federal agencies, and the courts. This change substantially narrowed the range of policy options that appeared legitimate, and the grounds on which corporate power could be contested.

Speaker

Elizabeth Popp Berman is Associate Professor of Organizational Studies and (by courtesy) Sociology at the University of Michigan. Her new book, Thinking Like an Economist: How Efficiency Replaced Equality in U.S. Public Policy, has just been published by Princeton University Press; her previous book, Creating the Market University: How Academic Science Became an Economic Engine, won several awards from the American Sociological Association and the Social Science History Association. She received her PhD from the University of California, Berkeley, and has broad interests in the sociology of science, economic sociology, and higher education.

Discussion

Zoe Evrard, Sciences Po, CEE & MaxPo

Charlotte Halpern , Sciences Po, CEE

Chair

Florence Haegel, Sciences Po, CEE

Compulsory Registration

For more information: contact.cee@sciencespo.fr