Economics Imperialism and the New Development Economics as Kuhnian Paradigm Shift? BEN FINE * School of Oriental and African Studies, London, UK Summary. — This paper addresses the evolving relationship between economics and other social sciences. It sets the present intellectual scene as one in which economics imperialism is rampaging across other disciplines. The designs of economics upon development studies are examined in terms of the Kuhnian notion of paradigm shift. Thereby the conclusion is drawn of the potential prospect of open debate around the economy and development, not least outside economics itself. But there is danger of economics imperialism, in the form of the post-Washington Consensus, foreclosing the analytical agenda at the expense of approaches based on the political economy of capitalism. Ó 2002 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved. Key words — economics imperialism, paradigm shift, interdisciplinarity 1. INTRODUCTION This paper addresses the evolving relation- ship between economics and the other social sciences with some special attention to devel- opment studies. It begins in Section 2 by setting the present intellectual scene as one in which economics imperialism is on the rampage across the other social sciences even as these are in turn on retreat from the cultural turn asso- ciated with post-modernism and the market turn of neoliberalism. Section 3 examines the designs of economics upon development eco- nomics and development studies in terms of the Kuhnian framework of paradigm shift. Section 4 concludes by suggesting the potential pros- pect of open debate around the economy and development, not least outside economics itself. There is, though, a danger that economics im- perialism, in the form of the post-Washington Consensus, will set and foreclose the analytical agenda at the expense of the political economy of capitalism. 2. NEOLIBERALISM, POST-MODERNISM AND ECONOMICS IMPERIALISM The contributions to the symposium on ‘‘Cross-Disciplinarity in Development Re- search,’’ World Development, 30(3), 2002, are to be welcomed for the variety of insights that they demonstrate are to be found by introduc- ing the content of other disciplines to eco- nomics. But, across each of the papers, and taking them as a whole, there is a serious omission. It might be best summed up by a lack of broader context, readily posited in terms of a sequence of questions. Why is this issue being posed now? Why has it not been settled in the past? Is it perennial, and nagging, re-emerging from time to time like a bad conscience or is the issue different now than in the past? If so, is it the world that has changed, economics or the other social sciences? In short, these papers might reflect the intellectual times in which they are situated but they do not reflect upon them. To some extent, this is a consequence of the ground rules under which the papers appear to World Development Vol. 30, No. 12, pp. 2057–2070, 2002 Ó 2002 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved Printed in Great Britain 0305-750X/02/$ - see front matter PII: S0305-750X(02)00122-5 www.elsevier.com/locate/worlddev * This paper is heavily shortened and revised from Fine (2001c). The research was primarily undertaken while in receipt of a Research Fellowship from the UK Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) under award number R000271046 to study ‘‘The New Revolution in Economics and Its Impact upon Social Sciences.’’ For an account, see http://www2.soas.ac.uk/Economics/eco- nimp/econimp1.html. Thanks to many for comments on earlier drafts. Final revision accepted: 10 July 2002. 2057