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Inequality pp 29–54Cite as

Palgrave Macmillan

Entangled Political Economy: A General Introduction

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Part of the book series: Palgrave Studies in Classical Liberalism ((PASTCL))

Abstract

Mainstream political economy has incurred numerous critiques, including the charge that it has a limited capacity to comprehend, and respond to, challenges such as inequality. A growing number of scholars especially question the realism of mainstream portrayals of benevolent and omniscient government planners aloofly reordering income and wealth distributions from afar.

This chapter outlines the major features of an alternative framework, known as entangled political economy. Entangled political economy stresses that economic, social, and political actions are generated by human interactions and are participatory in nature. Inspired by developments in complexity science, evolutionary theorising, and network analysis, the entangled political economy approach can be used to describe how entanglements between individuals and groups shape distributional outcomes.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Entangled political economy has also been referred to as commingled, conjunctive, intertwined, knotted, or non-separable political economy.

  2. 2.

    It is at the meso level that Potts and other evolutionary economists map what they refer to as meso-evolutionary trajectories 1, 2, and 3 onto variation, selection, and retention decisions.

  3. 3.

    Going one step further, it is quite conceivable that collaborative efforts between individuals and their agencies could, in fact, transform into acts of collusion between the interacting parties. It may generally be said that collaboration represents efforts to associate without limiting the potential for newcomers to join, and without intending to attain privileges at the expense of others, whereas collusion tends to close networked associations and is intended to obtain advantages at the cost of others. Although the difference between collaboration and collusion could vary, and subtly, depending upon the circumstances, the prospect of collusion in social affairs is generally considered to be problematic, for reasons as discussed later in this chapter and in subsequent chapters.

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  1. RMIT University, Melbourne, VIC, Australia

    Mikayla Novak

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Novak, M. (2018). Entangled Political Economy: A General Introduction. In: Inequality. Palgrave Studies in Classical Liberalism. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-89417-1_2

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-89417-1_2

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