Page 43 - Azerbaijan State University of Economics

THE JOURNAL OF ECONOMIC SCIENCES: THEORY AND PRACTICE, V.80, # 1, 2023, pp. 35-53

Establishing suitable controls is about balancing freedom and order in an economy
(Hagemann and Kurz, 1990). Suitable controls are indispensable in Lowe’s political
economics for establishing this balance. The establishment of paths and motivational
and behavioural patterns are the primary tasks of instrumental analysis, however, the
knowledge of paths and patterns themselves do not tell us about spontaneous
achievement of the macro-goal. Here comes the necessity of suitable controls designed
to direct and sustain micro motivations and behaviour towards a path conducive to
macro-goal. Control has important function when independence of micro-units in their
behaviour and decision making often leads to conflict with suitable behaviours and
motivations for attaining the macro-goal. Design and establishment of controls are
steps of intervention driving economy towards a goal. Lowe has not used control in
socialist sense; however, he has talked about manipulative and command controls and
command controls look like socialist controls. The aim of political economics is to
keep command controls at minimum (Oakley, 1987).

RELEVANCE IN CONTEMPORARY DEVELOPMENT PLANNING
Development planning is being re-envisioned across the world in pursuit of Sustainable
Development Goals (SDGs) of agenda 2030. Number of countries with some kind of
national development plan has more than doubled between 2006 and 2018 (Chimhowu et
al, 2019). This new age planning has witnessed some fundamental shift from the
th
development planning of later half of 20 century. Chimhowu et al. (2019) have found
varieties of plans and planning strategies across the countries after analyzing more than
100 national development plans. Majority of the plans (62%) were found to be
collaborative involving increased citizens’ participation and communication. Planning
exercises traditionally have been overwhelmingly based on investment planning and
sectoral balancing through technocratic modelling. Although, traditional planning has
taken a backseat, still more than twenty five percent of national development plans rely
on expert-led top to bottom approach, Togo, China, Saudi Arabia, and Zimbabwe are few
examples (Chimhowu et al., 2019). This type of planning conceived only as a technocratic
exercise tends to miss on vital socio-political cues necessary for realizing the desired
outcomes through policy implementation.

If we consider national planning as an exercise to achieve a macro-goal in an economy,
any planning exercise in modern market economy or a mixed economy can be thought
of as an exercise in steering micro-units in the market towards a macro-goal. In this
context, Adolph Lowe’s method of instrumental inference gives us a sound theoretical
basis to deal with various micro-motivations in the economy. The approach steers the
system towards a macro-goal through well-designed political, economic, and
behavioural controls.

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