Every now and then I contemplate rather deeply about what my wife and I should have for dinner. What we will eat depends on several factors; whether we are alone or have family/guests, whether we want to cook or buy takeout, what we have in our fridge and cupboards, and so on. Do we have to make vegan/vegetarian food or account for any allergies? And even when we have considered all these factors, we will probably still be left with plenty of possible options; Indian, pasta, pizza, a roast, tapas, or other dishes. Once we made up our mind, we will be able to justify our choice: We don’t have much time today and our friends are coming over, so we just order some pizzas, one or two vegetarian and one meat option maybe. If it was the weekend, I could have made them my world-famous risotto, but for now pizza must suffice. And next week, when our parents come, we make them a classic dish they like so much.
What have my wife’s and my dinner plans to do with pluralism in economics? you may ask. Many argue that in economics, like with our meal situation, there are plenty of options to choose from. In the words of pluralists, there is a plurality of items to choose from in different dimensions; what variables we need for our model, what method used for our inquiry, what properties of reality to use, the criteria that tell us what a good explanation is, what aims, questions or problems are worthy of our attention, what theories we use, what topics we address, and so on. And just like our dinner plans, we must make many choices depending on the context in order to do our research.
Now that we are aware of this plurality, we can think about pluralism. Roughly speaking, pluralism is a normative concept or theory that justifies and promotes this plurality of items and their choices. The normativity here is very important, as it requires respect and advocacy for differences. While my wife and I may order pizza for our friends tonight, this does not mean that the other options have no legitimacy at all, and depending on the circumstances they may serve us better in the future. And just like there is no one best dish that works every evening and is superior to all others, there is no one-size-fits-all methodology, epistemological principle, or theory in economics. This argument for pluralism emerged with the work of famous mid-20th century philosophers of science such as Karl Popper, Thomas Kuhn, Imre Lakatos, or Paul Feyerabend, specifically when they tried to answer the questions of what makes science work and successful. Those questions were then brought over into the social sciences like economics. As Thomas Kuhn observed, social scientists have to defend their choices of their research problems much more rigorously within their own communities than their natural sciences colleagues. And it is in this context of intense justifications that pluralists came to the conclusion that pluralism is necessary in the absence of a single conclusive final methodology or epistemological principle.
There are, however, critiques to this position. Many have argued that economics is either already pluralist or that pluralism would emerge automatically if there was a scientific need for it. New research areas or disciplines such as behavioural economics are said to be evidence of an already pluralist discipline. And if we look at the topical dimension, the range of topics that are deemed interesting or worthy of inquiry by economists, is so diverse that it is hard to say there is no pluralism at this level. The book series Freakonomics, or some of the work of Gary Becker, are cases in point here, where social phenomena such as religion, crime, cults, schoolteachers, or family planning are investigated by economists. Yet, methodologically, these scholars remain rather monist as their methodology is limited to mathematical modelling and statistical analysis of these social phenomena, something critics have called economic imperialism.
Others use an economic argument to show that there is no scientific need for pluralism. Academic communities and institutions function essentially like a perfectly competitive market where the best and most innovative ideas, theories and methodologies prevail. Economics is simply not pluralist because in this competition many of theories, ideas, and methodologies turn out to be useless or not good enough according to scientific standards. This particular belief, that of scientism, is quite common in rationalistic and scientific communities, but the reality of academic communities and institutions paints a different picture; one of class relations, gatekeeper power, prestige, judgements of individuals educational or social backgrounds, the institution’s embeddedness in the capitalist production of knowledge, institutional legacies of colonialism and slavery, etc. Academic communities are, like other social stuff that involves human beings interacting with each other, a messy thing, and here too does the perfect competitive market of ideas not exist.
Like our dinner situation where having pizzas makes it impossible for our friends to taste my world-class risotto, our methodological, epistemological, ontological, and theoretical choices limit the insights we can get from our investigations into social phenomena. Choices make us blind to what has been excluded, or even to how others may communicate with each other. As pluralists we recognise the differences in academic communities, but also think that we can find ways to respectfully and fruitfully communicate with each other.
