I believe that freedom of choice constitutes a pillar of rational choice in economic theory, regardless of the definition of rational choice one adopts. On the other hand, economics being socially embedded, free choice in economics seems senseless without political freedom of choice. Democracy, therefore, plays an important role in economic efficiency as much as in social fairness. Following this line of thought one should expect that economics, both in theory and in practice, should permanently strengthen the role of democracy in its institutional construction. Unfortunately it does not seem to be the case. Although historically many of the democratic achievements in the past two centuries have been intimately connected to the development of liberal economics, one can assert that mainstream liberal economics is intrinsically contradictory with the democratic ideal. The first stage of the demonstration of this thesis concerns the dismounting of the naturalization process that economics has undergone with the purpose of transforming economic decisions into plain technical issues supposedly free from democratic debate.The second stage concerns the ways in which the market has managed to legitimise its hegemony in society and the reasons why this contributes to the erosion of democracy. Within this hegemony five aspects will be dealt with; the imposition of a market jurisdiction; the deregulation of the economy; the process of political and economic unaccountability; the de-politicization of free choice and the conflict between the territorialization of democracy and the de-territorialization of economics.
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Paper provided by University of Évora, Department of Economics (Portugal) in its series Economics Working Papers with number
03_2007.
Find related papers by JEL classification: A1 - General Economics and Teaching - - General Economics B4 - Schools of Economic Thought and Methodology - - Economic Methodology H4 - Public Economics - - Publicly Provided Goods H5 - Public Economics - - National Government Expenditures and Related Policies I3 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Welfare and Poverty J8 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Labor Standards K0 - Law and Economics - - General
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