Stigler rejected democratic governance of scientific and economic knowledge

Evidence

Stigler rejected Rogge’s argument. First, he denied that full-cost pricing would necessarily attract a variety of funders and promote intellectual diversity. Research funding already utilized it, he argued; nevertheless, the US federal government and the Ford Foundation managed to exert tremendous influence over research priorities. Second, Stigler objected to the proposal to promote student sovereignty over higher education. He argued that students lacked the qualifications to judge either the quality of a course or the quality of research. … In general in intell[ectual] affairs democracy is not a proper system of organizing. The best econ[omics] in the US is not the one the public would elect; a science must impose the standards of an elite upon a profession … Affairs of science, and intellectual life generally, are not to be conducted on democratic procedures. One cannot establish a mathem[atical] theorem by a vote, even a vote of mathematicians. An elite must emerge and instill higher standards than the public or the profession instinctively desire. — Dieter Plehwe, Quinn Slobodian & Philip Mirowski (eds.), Nine Lives of Neoliberalism, 105

Categorization

• DEFINE: Reveals an intellectual meritocracy strand within the neoliberal MPS debate, fracturing any stereotype that these thinkers uniformly championed market/consumer sovereignty over all domains.
• XREF: Contradicts the crude association of neoliberalism with blanket consumer sovereignty; connects to debates between ‘market’ and ‘state’ factions within MPS historiography. — connects to: Stigler rejected collegiate self-governance as a safeguard of academic freedom — Dieter Plehwe, Quinn Slobodian & Philip Mirowski (eds.), Nine Lives of Neoliberalism, 138; Stigler held that science must be governed by an elite, not democratic procedures. — Dieter Plehwe, Quinn Slobodian & Philip Mirowski (eds.), Nine Lives of Neoliberalism, 107

Broader Connections

• Stigler held that science must be governed by an elite, not democratic procedures. #expands (0.92) — Dieter Plehwe, Quinn Slobodian & Philip Mirowski (eds.), Nine Lives of Neoliberalism, 107
• Stigler rejected collegiate self-governance as a safeguard of academic freedom #expands (0.85) — Dieter Plehwe, Quinn Slobodian & Philip Mirowski (eds.), Nine Lives of Neoliberalism, 138