Encyclopedia of Political Economy

by Mayo Toruno

edited by Phillip Anthony O'Hara. London and New York: Routledge, 1999 (reprinted 2001). Paper, ISBN: 0-415-24188-X, 50 [pounds sterling]. Two volumes, 1302 pages.

The publication of this encyclopedia underscores the extent to which political economy has come of age. I am here, of course, referring to the kind of political economy that emerged in the 1960s with the founding of the Association for Evolutionary Economics and the Union for Radical Political Economics, and not to the public choice version, or to the version that contemporary political scientists seem to have in mind (as in international political economy). To some extent, the political economy that began in the 1960s could be thought of as a revival of classical themes, as suggested by Edward Neil in his aptly titled article "The Revival of Political Economy" (1972). The reintroduction of the notion that struggles over the surplus sets the stage for economic outcomes did indeed hark back to classical themes, but its rejection of methodological individualism, healthy skepticism regarding the normative/positive dichotomy, and eagerness to explore such non-traditional topics as imperialism, racism, feminism, and sexism made this movement far more than a revival. It involved a conscious effort to develop an alternative form of economic analysis that reached beyond the rational exchange models of society by incorporating the socio-historical dimension of human behavior and acknowledging the importance of power. It called itself political economy, not because it explored the interplay between the political and economic, though that was part of its concern, but because its analysis was informed by the faith that a more humane and democratic order could be achieved. As Phillip O'Hara notes in the preface to this encyclopedia, "political economy has always sought to be relevant to the political concerns of successive generations of progressives" (p. xv).

Some thirty odd years after its emergence, this heterodox movement is alive and well. There now exists a wide array of political economic journals and associations, graduate programs in political economy, at least two generations of practicing political economists, and a variety of political economic perspectives. In one of the entries of this encyclopedia, entitled "Political Economy: Schools," Charles Clark identifies seven such schools: Marxist political economy, institutional political economy, Schumpeterian political economy, Post Keynesian political economy, Sraffian political economy, social political economy, and feminist political economy (p. 868). This plurality of perspectives highlights the breadth of this movement and helps explain the need for this encyclopedia. Political economy has evolved to such a point that practitioners specializing in one area can find themselves unable to keep up with the others. For that reason, as Marc Lavoie and Steven Pressman note in the foreword, this encyclopedia "was conceived as a means of bridging these many differences within the discipline" (p. xii). One of its goals is to provide greater cohesion to these various schools by highlighting their commonalities, contributing, thereby, to the development of a political economy that stands independent of neoclassical economics.

Phillip O'Hara, in association with the other 21 members of the editorial team and the 300 writers, referees, and advisors that were involved in this project, did an excellent job of creating a reference that documents in a very clear manner "the current state of knowledge in political economy" (p. xiv). The perspective is affirmative in that its organization reflects the concerns of political economists and not those of orthodox economists. For example, no entries can be found for such foundational neoclassical ideas as choice, scarcity, or utility, and while the term equilibrium can be found, it exists as part of a broader entry entitled "equilibrium, disequilibrium and non-equilibrium." Yet entries can be found for ecological feminism, holistic method, instincts, Mondrag6n, and radical institutionalism. Clearly, the terrain being surveyed extends far beyond neoclassical boundaries, focusing on feminist, institutional, Marxian, Post Keynesian, social, and Sraffian political economy. But this does not prevent the editors from including, when appropriate, theories along the edge of neoclassicism that might inform political economists, particularly if they touch upon social, evolutionary, environmental, or political issues.

The entries making up this encyclopedia consist of three types: (1) concepts, principles, theories, or problems of political economy; (2) general fields of political economy; and (3) major figures of political economy. Entries of the first type include such topics as conspicuous consumption and emulation, racism, and surplus approach to political economy; the second type of entry would include such things as radical institutionalism, business cycle theories, and Sraffian political economy; while the third type of entry confines itself to the major founder of a school of political economy, such as Michal Kalecki, Karl Marx, and Thorstein Veblen.