Book review of Elizabeth Popp Berman's critique on how economic reasoning has dominated US policy making, prioritizing efficiency over equality and justice.
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[...] Efficiency should be seen as a lens, not the only basis for deciding if a policy is worthwhile. Berman's Thinking Like an Economist makes a deep critique of how efficiency has displaced equality in U.S. policy making. By tracing its institutional ascent, she exposes how technocratic reasoning reshaped progressive ideals and constrained democratic imagination. Personal review Efficiency may appear logical and realistic, but it often conceals normative decisions about which interests are chosen. I was especially impressed by the ways that Democratic leaders seem to have internalized this framework, thereby accidentally limiting social programs' moral reach. [...]
[...] There is a real justice that might mean going beyond the numbers of how those things are important to human beings in public decision making. I agree with her contention that efficiency, absolutized, impoverishes politics. But her medium tone leaves the door open for reform even as it discredits rejection. What's needed is more epistemic humility on the part of policymakers, who need to recognize that no analytical style, however elegant, can substitute for moral judgment. A truly democratic process of policy requires a consideration of plural rationalities - efficiency, justice, participation and care. References Berman, E. P. (2022). [...]
[...] Thinking like an Economist: How Efficiency Replaced Equality in U.S. - Elizabeth Popp Berman (2022) In Thinking Like an Economist, Elizabeth Popp Berman (2022) explores the way that a style of economic reasoning-a focus on efficiency, trade-offs and cost-benefit analysis-has become the dominant narrative governing policy making in the United States. Drawing from more than three thousand secondary and archival sources, she shows the extent to which this technocratic viewpoint has entered government agencies, policy schools, and research institutions. Far from rejecting economics, her aim is to expose its normative orientation: she maintains that efficiency has surreptitiously replaced equality and justice as the dominant values informing policy making. [...]
[...] In other words, the technical replaced the moral as a domain of reasoning: liberal arguments were rearticulated in terms of rights and universality amounts to inefficiency. I agree with Berman that efficiency has become a moral screen, one filtering in favour of what can be counted at the cost of things like dignity and solidarity. But as Golembeski (2022) observes, Berman does not reject economics outright. Rather, she argues for normative pluralism, where we embed analytic concepts within frameworks which also include justice and equality. And efficiency cannot simply equate to legitimacy. How did the economic style reshape progressive politics and governance? [...]
[...] Thinking like an economist: How efficiency replaced equality in U.S. public policy. Princeton University Press. Golembeski, C. (2022). Book review: Thinking like an economist: How efficiency replaced equality in U.S. public policy. [...]
