Page 47 - Azerbaijan State University of Economics

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

Designing and establishment of controls while upholding an appreciable level of
freedom in a democratic setup may entail institutional and organisational innovations
which economic theory has paid little attention to. The idea of freedom is enhanced in
political economics by control, as control helps in achieving the macro-goal and thus
helps society enjoy prosperity and freedom which may be hampered otherwise. This
may seem to be a constrained freedom for overall welfare and a prosperous economy.
This notion of control must be recognised among the controlled, this recognition may
then create a support for controls among the controlled. The overall awareness regarding
control in the society comes from education and credibility of the controller.

While talking about the framework of political economics in real world context, the
existence of time lag may seriously hamper the efficacy of policy decisions. Though
the Lowe’s framework is theoretically designed to reduce the uncertainties and lags
in policy sphere, in real practice the efficacy of framework depends upon the design
of control and institutional mechanism to deal with it which may itself take a long
time and may emerge as a trial-and-error process. This trial-and-error process may be
overdrawn in many contexts and the nature of process itself raises the question of
efficacy in emergency or shock management in the context of planning and policy.

The contemporary globalised world with its international flow of trade and capital
presents a challenge to a controlled economic system as envisaged in Lowe's political
economics. Increasing globalisation has increased uncertainty, which impacts public
policy when many things may not be under public control, emanating from across
national boundaries. Obsession with controls may lead to retrograde policies,
including competitive devaluation and erecting high tariff barriers. Understanding
globalisation from a multidisciplinary perspective may be the first step towards
addressing the problem, followed by using tools and techniques from other social
sciences to manage the destabilising forces in a dynamic setting.

There are many technical, political, and philosophical problems which remain matter
of further investigation in Lowe’s political economics. Nevertheless, Political
economics is a novel attempt to widen the economic thinking and changing its method
with cooperation among social sciences. Talking in Kuhn’s sense, Lowe’s
methodological framework is in response to anomalies observed in the practice of
normal economic science. Paradigm in its initial stage is limited in scope and further
research is needed to acknowledge its relevance with facts. In Kuhn’s words, to be
accepted as a paradigm theory must seem better than its competitors but need not
explain all the facts with which it can be confronted (Kuhn 1970, p.17-18). Lowe’s
paradigm provides a puzzle-solving heuristic to handle the same data regarding
economics and promises a better understanding of economics, society, and its course
of development.

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