Abstract

We might be tempted to view the recent efforts by political leaders to cultivate certain convenient forms of economic ignorance as characteristic of a novel ‘post-truth’ age. This article suggests instead that we take this troubling trend as an invitation to examine the role of ignorance more generally in political economic thinking and practice. Whereas many scholars have treated uncertainty and other unknowns as external challenges that can be resolved through expertise and learning, this article instead endogenizes ignorance, treating it as a key tool in the development of policy knowledge. Drawing on archival material from the early Reagan and Thatcher years, this article examines a moment when many of the contemporary assumptions about economic ignorance and strategies for coping with it were first developed and tried out. I introduce a typology of the practical role of ignorance in economic policymaking, ranging from wishful thinking, to confusion, fudging, denial and puzzling. Mapping the space between learning and lying, this article contends that ignorance plays two very different roles in the trajectory of many economic policies, allowing policymakers to discount the political effects of their economic actions while also opening up the possibility of genuine reflexivity about the limits of expertise.

摘要

我们可能会倾向于将政治领导人最近为培养某些方便的经济无知形式所做的努力视为新的“后真相”时代的特征。相反，本文建议我们将这一令人不安的趋势作为邀请来更广泛地研究无知在政治经济思想和实践中的作用。尽管许多学者将不确定性和其他未知因素视为可以通过专业知识和学习解决的外部挑战，但本文将无知内生化，将其视为发展政策知识的关键工具。本文借鉴里根和撒切尔早期的档案材料，考察了许多当代关于经济无知的假设和应对策略的最初发展和尝试的时刻。我介绍了无知在经济决策中的实际作用的类型学，从一厢情愿到混乱、捏造、否认和令人费解。本文描绘了学习和撒谎之间的空间，认为无知在许多经济政策的发展轨迹中扮演着两个截然不同的角色，让政策制定者能够低估其经济行为的政治影响，同时也开启了真正反思的可能性。专业知识。