Economics’ legitimating power depends on the surrounding political and cultural context.

Evidence

Furthermore, wider cultural-political issues also mediate the legitimatory role of economics. In the United States in the late 1960s and the early 1970s, economics had persuasive force, particularly with the Nixon Administration, committed as it was to freeing markets from their Rooseveltian shackles. In contrast, in Malaysia in the late 1990s and the early 2000s a similar battle to permit derivatives trading was fought, but those engaged in it appealed for legitimacy to Islamic jurisprudence, not to neoclassical economics (Kamali 1997; Maurer 2001). — Donald MacKenzie, An Engine, Not a Camera, 1194

Categorization

• QUESTION: Worth chasing: the Malaysia case suggests performativity of economics is not universal — when does economics fail to legitimate and what substitutes for it?
• SEED: Could write an essay contrasting the cultural prerequisites for economics-as-legitimation across the US, Malaysia, and possibly Islamic banking contexts.
• XREF: connects to: Economic policy change requires reframing the moral meaning a community ascribes to its world. — Angus Burgin, The Great Persuasion: Reinventing Free…, 29; Röpke’s circle required deliberate cultural regulation alongside markets — Angus Burgin, The Great Persuasion: Reinventing Free…, 293; Economics serves power more effectively when it operates in innocence of serving it — Clara E. Mattei, Escape from Capitalism, 241 (+6 more)

Broader Connections

• Cultural legitimacy can be transferred to politics rather than the reverse. #expands (0.80)
• Economic structures are necessary but not sufficient to explain political and ideological features #expands (0.70)