Democracia e eficiênciaa difícil relação entre política e economia no debate contemporâneo

Resumo

Democracy and efficiency: hard relations between politics and economy. Many economists see politics as an irrational activity. They also think state action usually generates market inefficiencies and democratic institutions, such as elections, often work as obstacles to sound economic measures. Showing that vision has been embedded into the main currents of economic thought since the last century, we also argue those ideas are exported to great part of contemporary political science, including the area of public policies. Examining the literature, we show that rational choice political scientists, as the economists, claim governability and effective decisions will be guaranteed mainly through concentrated arenas or through insulated arrangements able to protect policy makers from political interference. In other words, governability depends on the reduction of the political arenas. On the contrary, we reject this technocratic solution of splitting politics from economy. With the support of classical pluralist thinkers, we stand another conception, arguing politics is the privileged social space for building interests and values in an institutionalized way. The difficulties to surpass current international crises since 2008 reveal this is a crucial problem: reducing politics would prevent societies from improving institutional solutions which are the only ones able to give space to emerging conflicts and, then, reach eventual consensus around them.

Ficha do documento

Tipo

Artigo científico

Ano

2012

Instituição

Fundação Getulio Vargas

Fonte

Repositório da FGV

Idioma

Português

Acesso

Acesso aberto

DOI

10.1590/S0101-31572012000400005

Identificador

oai:repositorio.fgv.br:10438/25026

Temas

EconomiaPolíticas Públicas

Palavras-chave

DemocracyEconomic efficiencyMainstream economicsPolitical scienceRational choice theoryEconomiaCiência políticaEconomia - Aspectos políticos