Are Homo Economicus and Homo Politicus Kin?

Abstract

In the ten years that have passed since Schumpeter published these words ridiculing James Mill’s Essay on Government, an extensive literature has appeared that attempts to do the very thing that Schumpeter said could not be done.² This literature, the work of economists for the most part, applies an “economic approach” to the study of politics and government and aims to bring both “economic” and “political” phenomena within the compass of a “general equilibrium theory.”³

Now, by virtue of its very nature, this utilitarian system is incapable of taking account of political life and of the way in which states, governments, parties and bureaucracies actually work. We have seen that its fundamental preconceptions do little harm in fields such as that part of economics where its “logic of stable and barn” may be considered as a tolerable expression of actual tendencies. But its application to political fact spells unempirical and unscientific disregard of the essence— the very logic—of political structures and mechanisms, and cannot produce anything but wishful daydreams and not very inspiring ones at that. The freely voting rational citizen, conscious of his (long-run) interests, and the representative who acts in obedience to them, the government that expresses these volitions—is this not the perfect example of a nursery tale. Accordingly we shall expect no contribution to a serviceable sociology of politics from this source. And this expectation is almost pathetically verified. J. A. Schumpeter¹