Progressive Era Origins of the Regulatory State and the Economist as Expert

Abstract

American economics established its scientific and political authority during the turbulent economic times of the long Progressive Era, 1885 to 1918. The rise of American economics is a tale with three acts. In the first act, a small band of progressive economists, many of them Protestant evangelicals on a self-appointed mission to redeem America, transformed the nature and practice of their own enterprise. From 1880 to 1900, both fostering and benefiting from a transformation of American higher education, the progressive economists established economics as a university discipline, transforming American political economy from a species of amateur, public-intellectual discourse into a professional, expert, scientific discipline-economics. In the second act, the upstart economists, writing with the scientific authority of their new professorial chairs, helped convince Americans and their political leaders that laissez-faire was doubly wrong, both economically outmoded and ethically stunted. Industrial capitalism, progressive economists said, created profound social conflicts, operated wastefully, and distributed its copious fruits unjustly. Moreover, the new economy History of Political Economy 47 (annual suppl.

A Concept of Two Authors: Commons and Williamson on Transactions

“…Commons opposed to both and, being unable to resuscitate the dying liberalism, offered a theory and practice of reformist economic policy-denominated 'reasonable capitalism'. This was compatible with the intellectual and political atmosphere of the Progressive Era prevalent in the USA in the first quarter of the twentieth century (Leonard, 2015). From this, he derived the central problem he attempted to confront: explaining the capitalist economic order not as the spontaneous result of the free interaction of rational, self-interested actors, but as a deliberate product of social regulation (Bazzoli, 1999).…”

Smart Cities and Knowledge Commons

“…Cities also came to be seen as posing new problems, often caused by their successes in meeting earlier social demands. Both fueled by and fueling that problem/solution framework, the Progressive political movement of the early twentieth century relied heavily on trained and trusted experts, especially economists and other social scientists (Leonard 2015). Those experts were often educated in newly formed occupational disciplines and professional schools.…”

Policy Practitioners’ Engagement With Evidence-Based Policy: A discursive analysis

“…France, the Académie des sciences morales et politiques was established in 1832 explicitly to support the post-Napoleonic state through research on practical issues of relevance to government administration and statecraft, such as addressing poverty, public health, and criminal behaviour (Heilbron, 2004). Meanwhile, in America the Progressive movement of late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries was characterised by the same concern with scientifically-based societal transformation as the Victorian reformers -albeit taking an approach grounded more in the pragmatic philosophy of figures such as Peirce, James, and Dewey (Leonard, 2015;Recchiuti, 2007). This was accompanied by major urban research universities such as Columbia and the University of Chicago began developing a stronger focus with social problems such as poverty, while the University of Madison began articulating what would later be known as the 'Wisconsin idea' that universities had an obligation to use their expertise and generate research specifically for the benefit of the public (Harkavy, 2000;Witte, 2000).…”