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Call for papers – Pluralism with Purpose: Applying a Pluralist Approach to Informing Policy

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This is the title of a special issue of the International Journal of Pluralism and Economics Education due to be published in 2018. The guest editors have issued a call for papers.

Understanding economic phenomena by using pluralism in teaching and research is an intensely debated problem, but we believe that an increased focus on applied pluralist approaches is now required (e.g., to operationalise the OECD’s New Approaches to Economic Challenges programme). We need both a shared understanding of the meaning of a pluralist approach to understanding economic phenomena, including feasible applied methods from relevant disciplines, and a means of choosing one or more amongst them.

Pluralism is more than applications, however, it is also about culture, institutions and relationships, including those between economists and amongst other social scientists. So for instance the OECD discusses the need for ‘appropriate changes in the structure of the Organisation to avoid one-size-fits-all and move beyond a silo-approach to policy, to enhance inter-disciplinarity and to safe-guard against groupthink’. This also applies to so-called heterodox economists as they are clearly not automatically pluralist in practise or outlook. Pluralism is not about replacing one dogma with another one.

This Call for Papers welcomes a dialogue with mainstream economists, both academics and practitioners, to build bridges and break down walls within the economics discipline and between economics and other disciplines. We are looking particularly for papers focusing on the application of pluralist approaches in terms of methods, but also in terms of the institutions and behaviour necessary to solidify pluralism.

This Call for Papers invites contributions in the following areas:

  1. What is an applied pluralist approach? When can it be said to be scientific?
  2. What can economics learn from the natural and social sciences?
  3. What can we learn from practices in multi-disciplinary research centres?
  4. What is the scope for application i.e., how do we define the economy or economic phenomena?
  5. What are the methods and procedures for applying a pluralist approach to understanding economic phenomena? How to decide the methods or combination of methods fit for purpose? How must theories, methods and evidence interact?
  6. How can pluralism be supported within the policy making process and within government institutions?
  7. How does pluralism as a modus vivendi relate to a modus operandi in terms of institutions, behaviour, methods, etc.

KEY DATES: Abstracts Due:                                                 April 1, 2017

Notification of abstract acceptance:           April 30, 2017

Submission of papers:                                   August 30, 2017

Notification of paper acceptance:              October 1, 2017

Submission of final papers                           January 1, 2018

 

If you have any queries concerning this special issue, please email the Guest Editors,

Henry Leveson-Gower and Ioana Negru.

From: p.15 of WEA Commentaries 7(1), February 2017
http://www.worldeconomicsassociation.org/files/Issue7-1.pdf

 

Download WEA commentaries Volume 7, Issue No. 1, February 2017 ›

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