How Does Economic Knowledge Have a Politics? On the Frustrated Attempts of John K. Galbraith and Robert M. Solow to Fix the Political Meaning of Economic Models in The Public Interest

In the late 1960s, two big shots of postwar economics debated model-building techniques in the Public Interest. Robert M. Solow argued that the new methods enabled precise state intervention. To John K. Galbraith, they marginalized critical economic thinking and abetted the prevailing growthist ideology to the detriment of the public good. Both claimed influence over policy making but through different channels. Both argued vigorously to fix the political meaning of modeling before a general audience. This article focuses on the actors’ frustrated attempts to establish clear-cut relationships between research practices, modes of intervention, and political ideals. Despite their strenuous exertions, they did not succeed in equipping their competing methodological stances with equally distinct politics. Where these efforts failed, they resorted to constructions of scientific self and other. Personae glued together practices (including assumptions, tools, and standards of evidence) and politics where perhaps no inherent bond existed. Our reading (1) elucidates the confusion over mathematical models just as they became the objects of political debate, and (2) aims to confound the idea that there is a politics of knowledge that is clearly delineable and transparent to historical actors and retrospective observers alike.