Theories of Political Economy.

• Author: Johnson, L.E.

Caporaso and Levine provide an interesting, well written, and provocative survey of alternative conceptions of political economy. The book treats the classical, Marxian, neoclassical, and Keynesian traditions, as well as the contemporary approaches referred to as the power-centered, state-centered, justice-centered, and purely economic models. The book's primary theme reflects the authors' view that many difficulties in understanding political economy result from a propensity to gloss over the distinct nature of the domains of economics and politics. As such, the authors emphasize the desirability of treating economics and politics as categorically distinct concepts with political economy then being conceived of as the relationship between the two.

The analytical framework employed is based on alternative notions of politics and economics. The authors provide three distinct but overlapping conceptions of politics. The first views politics as government, referring to the activities, structure, and processes of government. The second conception centers on the public, meaning activities that involve people in non-exchange situations. This approach includes a distinction between those that define the public in terms of self-interest and those who recognize a public interest, which transcends individual satisfaction. Finally, the authors discuss politics as concerned with the authoritative allocation of values, with economic and political processes serving as alternative allocation mechanisms. Given these alternatives the authors conclude by defining politics as the activities and institutions that relate to making authoritative public decisions for society as a whole.

Three conceptions of economics are also presented, which in combination with their notion of politics, provide the authors' model for discussing alternative approaches to political economy. One concept of economics focuses on the method of economic "calculation." This notion posits a mode of thought or analysis which links individuals to the world, and has individual preferences as its starting point. The focus here is on constrained optimization and individual decision making: the goal being allocative efficiency. A second notion of economics centers on what the author's term "material reproduction" or "provisioning." The emphasis here is on the type of activity that is economic in nature, meaning individual participation in activities resulting in collective reproduction...