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Thursday, August 15, 2024
The Political Economy of, inter alia, Law and Political Economy
From this recent (and paywalled) piece in New York Magazine by Jonathan Chait:
Six months after Obama left office, Larry Kramer, a law professor and president of the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, convened a meeting at the ‘21’ club in Manhattan. The group included an array of leading philanthropists, think-tank heads, donors, progressive writers, and academics. As Michael Tomasky, one of the participants, later reported, the group continued its discussions the following day at the Ford Foundation, where its members began to envision themselves as the founders of a new intellectual paradigm that would move beyond the failed neoliberalism of the Obama era....
[A]nti-neoliberalism had some key advantages that made it irresistible to its progressive audience. It supplied an explanation for Trump’s victory that did not require progressives to compromise on their political values in order to allow Democrats to regain power. To the contrary, this theory allowed — nay, demanded — the fulfillment of every progressive wish. A Green New Deal, a jobs guarantee, higher minimum wage, Medicare for All — these proposals were not only possible but politically necessary to defeat Trump.
The plan devised by Kramer and his allies explained how anti-neoliberal thought would be disseminated. “It makes sense to begin with the academy and think tanks — though we will not want to confine ourselves exclusively to these even in the beginning — and to work out from there in subsequent stages,” a Hewlett strategy document explained. Hewlett poured $140 million into grants to writers, magazines (The Atlantic, Washington Monthly, and The American Prospect, among many others), conferences, podcasts, academic centers (at universities like Harvard, Columbia, and Georgetown), and think tanks. The Roosevelt Institute’s budget more than tripled. The massive upsurge in demand for essays, columns, and lectures assailing neoliberalism was met rapidly with a booming supply....
Devotees of the anti-neoliberal movement gained special access. Jennifer Harris, who had been running a Hewlett Foundation grant program called the Economy and Society Initiative, which sought to counter neoliberal thinking, joined the administration and became, as the Times put it in a flattering profile, “the Queen Bee of Bidenomics,” who “had a hand in everything from making the case for industrial policy to designing a new framework for trade.” Twenty-five grantees from Harris’s project, as well as two fellow Hewlett employees, joined her in the administration.
I offer all of this in a fairly value-neutral way, descriptive way. At most, the value added here is just good plain caution. I am not endorsing or disagreeing with the rest of Chait's article. I definitely don't intend this as a criticism of law and political economy as a scholarly endeavor. (I understand that some members of the law and political economy movement who currently reside in the academy may also understand LPE as a political project and either move, or see themselves moving, between the academy and other, non-intellectual spaces, such as think tanks, foundations, congressional staff, and the executive branch. I don't intend this as a judgment of that branch, either, but to the extent that those individuals are engaged in extra-academic matters that involve seeking and exercising power and status, of course they deserve careful scrutiny, journalistic investigation, and, where warranted, criticism. If you're in the arena, you're in the arena.) To the contrary, I find the best of the law and political economy work excellent and provocative, although I remain perplexed that so much of it says so little about the prior 250 years of work in political economy. (To be sure, a certain number of articles are creeping into the law reviews that bear the words "political economy of" in their titles but say nothing for which any grounding in political economy, old or new, is required. But that is pretty standard in the period when a new entrant into the "law and" field becomes sexy. The best work should not be blamed for the inevitable coattail-riding. Only the authors of that work, and law review editors, and the legal academy for relying on law review editors, should bear the blame.)
At most, I offer it to suggest the following: 1) As Jesus said, if I recall correctly, the rich are always with us. That most definitely includes academics, philanthropists, and "progressive writers" who hang out at the 21 Club or the Ford Foundation building. 2) As I suggested the other day, journalism lost a lot when the era of mass and diffuse funding from large and small businesses through advertising faded. Targeted funding from ideologically committed groups for specific projects is dangerous as hell, and one should distrust the magazines, radio networks, and other media organs that take that money, with or without disclosure. 3) Mocking the number of people and projects that are in a symbiotic relationship with and draw sustenance from the teat of foundations, billionaires, establishment types, and so on is pretty low-hanging fruit. It should be plucked at every opportunity. 4) More to the point, it should be observed. For every political economy-draped narrative that involves political movements, funded by shadowy figures with connections to vast reserves of money, engaged in ideological projects and seeking to extend their power and influence, there is almost certainly a counter-narrative about the money, foundations, shadowy figures, and unmentioned motives behind the effort to frame, publicize, and exploit that narrative. As long as things like foundations, funders, and project meetings are involved, there is a political economy story--one that generally involves competition for power, status, influence, employment, funding, and prestige within both the elite academic ecosystem and the foundation/think-tank/rich-philanthropist-heir ecosystem. It's a competition for money, power, and status all the way down.
Personally, I always find both sides of the game--both the shadowy networks that are written about and the shadowy networks that write about them--interesting and worth investigating. It's only when we pretend only one side exists that we fail in our intellectual duties and risk being suckered.
Posted by Paul Horwitz on August 15, 2024 at 12:27 PM in Paul Horwitz | Permalink
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