Why political economy?
I have always followed politics very closely, due in no small part to coming from what one might call a very political family background. However, as an economist by training who wanted to make a contribution to the public good, I have also exerted significant effort trying to focus on economic and policy problems separated from politics. Not because I believe in purely technocratic decision-making or solutions to societal problems, but rather because society cannot take the best possible political decisions unless the policy and economic analysis that informs those decisions is accurate and high quality.
However, the degree to which such separation is possible varies a lot. And for some periods in time, the role of politics, including vested interests, is so strong that it may be almost pointless to focus on solving economic and societal problems. A democracy is premised on the idea that those who will act in the best interests of society at large, are those who are elected by society in ‘free and fair’ elections. If that is actually what transpires, then as an economist or policy expert you can mostly get on with your core work, knowing that it will feed in to some kind of legitimate societal process.
If, however, the individuals who obtain leadership positions are simply selected and directed by vested interests - who seek private gain rather than the public good - then it becomes a very different situation. If democratic processes are subverted in such a way that local or foreign interests can effectively buy their preferred leaders, there is no reason to believe that any understanding or analysis of what is in the public interest will matter. Democratic processes can of course be subverted in a wide range of ways. One is through funding of political parties and candidates. Another is through manipulation of media coverage. A third, more recent, phenomenon is the manipulation of social media. A fourth is outright rigging of election results. That can occur through rigging of physical ballot counts but is much easier, and more likely in modern times, through manipulation of electronic voting machines or digital tallying of results. Besides these, there are a range of other ways to manipulate outcomes so that they ultimately do not reflect the ‘well-informed will of the people’.
Related problems can also manifest regionally and globally. Perhaps the most important example of this at present concerns the global energy transition. Many of the tensions in, and current failures of, this transition are due to geopolitics. More powerful nations seek to leverage the need for a transition to advance their own interests, including bearing as little of the cost as possible while securing a disproportionate quantity of the gains. The notional motive behind the transition - addressing climate change and its associated harms - becomes a secondary consideration. Economics, or at least certain economistic ways of thinking, can provide some useful insights into this partly because a large part of economics is concerned with individuals and institutions seeking to advance their own interests. Furthermore, economics can help us understand what they benefits and costs are to different policies or approaches, and in particular how those might benefit some actors at the expense of others.
In these early stages, my writing is mostly going to be focused on the forthcoming 2024 elections in South Africa. There is a remarkable amount of important information that is being withheld from the public, manipulated, or misreported in other ways. Anyone who takes democracy seriously should be concerned about that. And it is worth making some effort to lay out what is really going on.
A lot of these dynamics in South Africa can be linked to events elsewhere. One can learn a lot about what is really happening in BRICS from what is happening in South Africa. I will also likely publish some thinking on the energy transition, locally and globally. The large amounts of money required to finance that transition mean that a range of interest groups are positioning themselves not just to benefit from it in a legitimate way, but to manipulate how the transition happens in order to secure undue benefits. That, too, is a major driver of some of the political manipulation that is happening in South Africa.
The point being that, ultimately, the interaction between politics and economics is crucial. And that is why this blog is about political economy.