Suchergebnisse

Aujourd'hui, l'économie de l'environnement est la réponse de la théorie économique néoclassique à la crise écologique. Pourtant, à une époque, ses principaux contributeurs la considéraient comme une avancée révolutionnaire qui allait changer la conduite et le contenu de l'économie en tant que discipline. La compréhension et la lutte contre la pollution de l'environnement étaient au cœur de ce changement de paradigme potentiel. En retraçant l'histoire de la conceptualisation de la pollution en la considérant comme une externalité et une défaillance du marché, ce papier met en lumière le développement des idées de Marshall, Pigou, Pareto, Coase, Stigler, Samuelson, Ciciacy-Wantrup et Kapp. Il montre que la théorie de l'externalité de la pollution a intégré une éthique élitiste et une idéologie libérale du marché. En tant que défaillance du marché, la pollution a été considérée comme une erreur mineure corrigeable du système de prix. L'évaluation monétaire des dommages sociaux et environnementaux est devenue le moyen de justifier les niveaux optimaux de pollution. Les théories néolibérales de la diffusion des droits de propriété ont encore édulcoré les aspects interventionnistes potentiels. Le réalisme biophysique, dans les travaux de Kneese, Ayres et d'Arge, et le réalisme social dans la théorie du déplacement des coûts de Kapp ont été perdus dès lors que l'économie de l'environnement a adopté un formalisme mathématique déductiviste. La théorie alternative de Kapp est basée sur une compréhension économique classique des institutionnalistes du transfert des coûts et des relations de pouvoir. Elle préconise une réponse de politique publique sous la forme de minima sociaux objectifs obtenus par la réglementation et la planification. Cette théorie a jusqu'à présent été utilisée avec succès pour empêcher un éventuel changement de paradigme révolutionnaire dans la théorie économique des prix. Classification JEL : A13 B2 B55 D61 D62 H21 H23 P16 P18 P48 Q5 Q52 Q53 Q57 Q58

Coronavirus (COVID-19) policy shut down the world economy with a range of government actions unprecedented outside of wartime. In this paper, economic systems dominated by a capital accumulating growth imperative are shown to have had their structural weaknesses exposed, revealing numerous problems including unstable supply chains, unjust social provisioning of essentials, profiteering, precarious employment, inequities and pollution. Such phenomena must be understood in the context of long standing critiques relating to the limits of economic systems, their consumerist values and divorce from biophysical reality. Critical reflection on the Coronavirus pandemic is combined with a review of how economists have defended economic growth as sustainable, Green and inclusive regardless of systemic limits and multiple crises – climate emergency, economic crash and pandemic. Instead of rebuilding the old flawed political economy again, what the world needs now is a more robust, just, ethical and equitable social-ecological economy.

Popular authors and international organizations recommend transformation to "new economy". However, this is misleadingly interpreted as radical orrevolutionary. Two problematic positions are revealed: being pro-growth while seeking to change the current form of capitalism (e.g. Ha-Joon Chang), and being anti-growth on environmental grounds but promoting growth for poverty alleviation and due to agnosticism about growth (e.g. Tim Jacksonand Kate Raworth). Both positions involve contradictions and an evident failure to address, or perhaps even a denial of, the actual operations ofcapital accumulating economies. Thus, economists ostensibly critical ofcapitalism turn out to be apologists for growth who conform to the requirements of a top-down passive revolution, that leaves power relations undisturbed and the economic structure fundamentally unchanged. The growth economy is shown to include technocracy, productivism associated with eugenics, inequity disguised as meritocracy, competition concealing militarism and imperialism, imposition of development as progress, and financialization and commodification of Nature.

In a recent article Ulrich Brand has discussed how best to perform policy analysis. I reflect upon the paper as an interdisciplinary researcher experienced in public policy problems and their analysis with a particular interest in the relationship between social, economic and environmental problems. At the centre of the paper is the contrast between two existing methodologies prevalent in political science and related disciplines. One is the rationalist approach, which takes on the character of a natural science, that believes in a fully knowable objective reality which can be observed by an independent investigator. The other is a strong social constructivist position called interpretative policy analysis (IPA), where knowledge and meaning become so intertwined as to make independence of the observer from the observed impossible and all knowledge highly subjective. Brand then offers his model as a way forward, but one that he closely associates with the latter. My contention is that policy analysis, and any way forward, needs to provide more of a transformative combination of elements from both approaches. Indeed I believe this is actually what Brand is doing.

"Ulrich Brand hat in diesem Journal kürzlich die Frage nach neuen Wegen in der Policy-Analyse aufgeworfen. Der vorliegende Kommentar ist geschrieben aus Sicht eines interdisziplinär forschenden Politikwissenschaftlers mit Interesse an den Schnittstellen sozialer, ökonomischer und ökologischer Problemen. Im Mittelpunkt stehen zwei unterschiedliche, in den Sozialwissenschaften vorherrschende Methodologien. Der rationalistische Ansatz ist den Naturwissenschaften nachgebildet und nimmt eine vollständig nachvollziehbare, objektive Realität an, die wissenschaftlich beobachtet werden kann. Die sozialkonstruktivistische Position, oder interpretative Policy Analyse, nimmt hingegen Wissen und Meinung als untrennbar verknüpft an, weshalb sich wissenschaftliche Beobachtung davon nicht unabhängig machen kann und daher subjektiv geprägt bleibt. Brand bietet sein Modell als Ausweg aus dieser Konstellation an, aber er ordnet es vor allem der sozialkonstruktivistischen Position zu. Mein Argument lautet dagegen, dass es eine Synthese von Elementen aus beiden Richtungen braucht, und tatsächlich ist es das, was Brand selbst macht." (Autorenreferat)

AbstractThe attempt to provide insight into the interactions between the economy and the environment has been an on‐going struggle for many decades. The rise of Ecological Economics can be seen as a positive step towards integrating social and natural science understanding by a movement that aims to go beyond the confines of mainstream economics towards a progressive political economy of the environment. However, this vision has not been shared by all those who have associated themselves with Ecological Economics and there has been conflict. An historical analysis is presented that shows the role of mainstream theory in delimiting the field of environmental research. The argument is put forward that rather than employing a purely mechanistic objective empirical methodology there is a need for an integrating interdisciplinarity heterodox economic approach. In order to distinguish this approach—from the more mainstream multidisciplinary linking of unreconstituted ecological and economic models—the name Social Ecological Economics is put forward as expressing the essential socio‐economic character of the needed work ahead.