Il XXIV Workshop Annuale della Società Italiana di Economia e Politica Industriale (SIEPI) si svolgerà in presenza nei giorni 29 e 30 gennaio 2026 presso l’Università degli Studi di Bari Aldo Moro.
Programma a questo link.
Sessione 1B Sessione speciale STOREP
Cultures, Ideologies, Knowledge, and (the Possibility of) Change
Modera Lauretta Rubini
- Paolo Ramazzotti, Università di Macerata – The Neoliberal Paradox, Cultural Segmentation and Common Sense
Most policy proposals that deal with progressive alternatives to the status quo wittingly or unwittingly tend to take the institutional context for granted. This approach is reasonable. Institutional change may require so much time that that, given the scope of a policy, institutions may well be assumed not to change. A distinction is, nevertheless appropriate. It may be fairly easy to identify the timing that technical (e.g. legal) changes require. It is less clear how people are likely to deal with change. Since socio-economic systems are characterized by manifold conflicts of interests and all change occurs at some cost – such as, e.g., social tensions or even conflict – a policy-oriented observer may be unable to take account of what people will eventually deem appropriate. People themselves often become aware of what change involves only when they are faced with specific choices.
The aim of the paper is to discuss the scope for progressive policies by taking account of these remarks. The discussion focuses on two issues. First, it is difficult to conceive of an improvement relative to the status quo without a proper qualification of the term “better”. It is far from clear that everybody will agree on what it is. It is also difficult to believe that “better” is what voters signal through elections. Indeed, socio-political dispersion often determines electoral outcomes that clash with the needs of most people. Then again, broad notions of “better”, such as those centered on Tool’s non-invidiousness, Kahnemann’s happiness or Sen’s freedom, may be important beams for long-run strategies but they do not provide guidelines for a here and now action. At the very least they beg for an operationalization.
Conventional reliance on democracy as periodic elections also begs for a qualification. Voting may be necessary but is most likely insufficient to choose potential change.
The paper contends that neoliberal policies prevented sections of the population in several countries from appreciating what their true needs are. Classical voting systems ended up reflecting this situation. Consequently, conventional democracy is backsliding. Under these circumstances, the paper raises two issues. First, to what extent social protest may contribute to the identification of issues that the institutional setup prejudges. Second, to what extent that protest may allow the creation of a consensus for policies that contrast neoliberalism.
- Angela Ambrosino, Mario Cedrini, Università di Torino – Epistemic Authority at an Age of Fragmentation
The recent literature on economics as a discipline tends to argue that among the presumed costs of pluralism is a loss of disciplinary identity with consequent decay of epistemic authority. To avoid this scenario, it is often argued, pluralism should be peripheral. Still, the current era in economics seems characterized by an unprecedented variety of research programs, showing the potentialities of economics’ new openness towards other disciplines and the potentially positive implications of the applied turn. To overcome the impasse, the article suggests that research programs be considered in their complexity, starting from the multiple dimensions that characterize them (methods and techniques, foundations and core assumptions, topics considered relevant, values associated with the approaches), which do not necessarily move in the same direction.
We thus recommend, borrowing from Michael Freeden’s morphological approach to ideologies, that research programs be looked at as sets of core, adjacent, and peripheral concepts, with a view to emphasizing the possibilities of evolution and change that the proximity (the ability of concepts to define each other) and permeability (the extent to which research programs intersect by means of overlapping concepts) of such concepts ensure for the discipline’s future and present.
- Stefano Fiori, Università di Torino – Journals as Organizations. Institutional Processes and Change in Economic Knowledge
Journals undoubtedly play a fundamental role in shaping economic knowledge. Many articles have examined the pressure exerted by top economic journals and the journal ranking system on the direction of economic research. On the one hand, it has been emphasized that this favors the expansion of the mainstream at the expense of heterodox approaches and penalizes innovative research. On the other hand, authors such as Colander and colleagues have argued that the mainstream can change by embracing diverse methods and approaches. Therefore, the mainstream is no longer identifiable with the original orthodox approach. However, little attention has been paid to the specific mechanisms that determine the formation and change of economic knowledge, because analyses are often limited to demonstrating either the existence of institutional concentration (such as journals, departments, universities, etc.) or the protean nature of the mainstream. The analysis of institutional change proposed by Douglass North can provide a useful tool for understanding how economic knowledge changes through the interaction between institutions (such as research rules) and organizations (such as journals). The paper aims to investigate the relationship between top-down and bottom-up institutions by linking it to the phenomenon of growing specialization in economics.
Mario Cedrini