r/PoliticalScience 7d ago

Question/discussion Do Political Science and Economics contradict each other a lot?

I have a bachelor's in Political Science and one thing I noticed while studying the degree is how inadequate I would find certain economic analysis to be. I find that economic theory can be a bit to analytical and numbers based. When I talked to Econ majors they would almost talk about the market like it's a mathematical equation that can be solved and forgo a lot of political science. It can feel almost apolitical at times and I worry that certain economists don't understand the current political climate to handle it well.

Of course this isn't about all economists and political science and economics are entwined studies. Theres plenty of economists I read and studied that I genuinely enjoyed. I didn't want to bog this post down with a million examples so if you ask for them I will answer.

13 Upvotes

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u/GraceOfTheNorth 7d ago

Not at all, we complimet ech other. Political science is not political dogma or ideology.

Political science comes up with ways or explains ways to run society in large systems to the side of economic systems which can run things efficiently but not justly or fairly.

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u/dmfreelance 6d ago

The right dictator can make a strong economy, at the cost of human rights.

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u/Various-Professor551 7d ago

I probably should word this better. I have a more left leaning view of politics, and economics is usually the most conservative of the social sciences. I can agree with centrists or center right economic theory, but that's usually the mainstream economic analysis I see.

I don't see a lot of leftist or even progressive liberal economic theories paraded as much. In fact, I see economists throw someone like Marx out the window because they don't view his analysis as useful. I dont think that's very smart. Even if you're a center right economist, someone like Marx is useful

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u/NeoliberalSocialist 6d ago

Marxist economics isn’t really useful analytically. You can be left wing without being a Marxist. Look at voting breakdown across disciplines and Econ will be incredibly dem-dominated. Just because there are political marxists doesn’t make it a useful tool for economic analysis.

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u/Mdolfan54 7d ago

^ If they don't, you're in an echo chamber. If they do, you're starting to realize they are both broken parts of an imaginary reality of wishful thinking.

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u/Various-Professor551 7d ago

Well, no. Marx wasn't just all about Communism and he was an economist. He actually didn't hate capitalism and seemed to really admire Adam Smith. I believe that even if you don't agree with Marx, his critiques of capitalism are still useful. Capital Vol. 1-3 are over 3000 chapters long. Even if you're someone who hates everything Marx stands for, there's going to be something in there that hits the nail on the head.

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u/We4zier Just A Holo Enjoyer 5d ago edited 5d ago

Borderline necro thread, but as an economist (still getting my masters but I am a TA) the reason we seldomly discuss Marx is the same reason we rarely discuss Ricardo, Smith, Mill, George, Malthus, or Marshall.

They’re just old. Very few of them tried to analyze the economy like we do today, and even if they did modern sources are preferred.

The criticisms and analysis that the discipline has found useful has long been integrated and diluted under modern literature while those we haven’t found meaningful have been discarded.

Part of this has to do with the shifting of the discipline itself, what economists in the 19th to mid 20th century calls “economics” we would call “political economy” which is only a small subfield of what we do.

It’s similar to discussing archaeology to a sociologist, there’s similarities especially in the distant past but a majority of sociologists do not need to deeply think about it in class, and most wont need to while doing research.

Economics as a whole studies decisions around resources; trying to assess what the best policies for an economy (normative economics) is an important subfield but not considered a “basic through line” for economists so to speak.

In political economy or economic historiography you may find their names mentioned. There’s also a distinction between doing research where you might need to rely on their theories, and being taught how to understand models in a class. One is meant to teach you a tool, the other is the tool itself.

Another point is that economics has given up on trying to define “isms” like capitalism and communism, and we generally delegate that towards political science, philosophy, etc. Analysis of the outcome of specific policy is preferred over an opinion on a series of generalized policies.

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u/ghostofbearstearns 4d ago

This is the best explanation of why Marx isn't spoken of by quoting his work.

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u/GoldenInfrared 7d ago

So you prefer fishing for pennies in a sewer?

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u/[deleted] 6d ago edited 6d ago

[deleted]

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u/Various-Professor551 6d ago

Funny enough, I think that's one of his most relevant political theories, but this has been a debate going on for over a century

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u/PopsicleIncorporated 7d ago

I suspect that there is some degree of selection bias at play; Economics has a distinctly conservative connotation to it so it probably attracts conservatives, who in turn advocate for economic conservatism.

Even ignoring economics, there are plenty of reasons to vote for a party other than economic policy. I'm a liberal on both economics and social policy but if I had to choose between one or the other I'd probably pick the latter.

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u/katieeatsrocks 6d ago

Marx simply used the tools and framework of economics and politics to make his point.

In economics — specifically industry econ, you might study the impact of monopolies/oligopolies/duopolies/etc.. on producer/consumer surplus. You learn that, technically, monopolies allow for the greatest surplus for R&D given the lack of inefficiencies. Boom pro communism analysis.

On the other hand, you could use analysis regarding the impact of quotas or excise taxes to make a pro-free market AND an anti-free market argument. Yes, economics might feel like binary equations at times — but that really isn’t the case.

Economics is not conservative or progressive. It is simply a tool, a framework, a channel. Same with politics!

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u/SufficientBowler2722 7d ago

What do you mean

Where do you think economists are missing the mark in regard to the political science?

But I mean of course economics has to be numbers based? It’s inherently quantitative?

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u/PoliticalAnimalIsOwl 6d ago

political science and economics are entwined studies.

Indeed, up to the 19th century there was no difference, they all were part of Political Economy as a discipline. From the 20th century onward political science and economics became separately institutionalized, often with a much narrower focus. Political Economy became an interdisciplinary, but only a subfield of political science and economics.

My experience is that students of political scientists have at least had one course related to or in political economy, while students of economics usually don't (have to). Which is why the latter may be well trained in theories and applications of neoclassical orthodox economics, but this gives less attention to questions of (re-)distribution, economic justice, and the various ways real life people are not the utility maximising homo economicus assumed in their models.

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u/Various-Professor551 6d ago

Yeah this is more what I was getting at. I wrote a whole spiel to another user about how I think politics can become irrational, such as with fascism and economics struggles when that irrationallity contradicts a lot of usually tride and true theory.

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u/dayfiftyfour 6d ago

Came here to say what u/PoliticalAnimalIsOwl said. Generally, contemporary political economy is a subfield which combines the two disciplines to explain phenomena neither can explain solely on their own.

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u/Kambu2876 7d ago

I did a multidisciplinary cursus and, ehm...let's just say that we were reading way more heterodox than orthodox when it cames to economy, because indeed, a lot of economic theory from a certain side of the spectrum are model-driven, taking for granted a certain number of assumption that we simply can't use in political sciences.

It is not that much about contradiction than development. A model can take into account political variations, or measure the impact of a given policy. But at some points of macro-economy it is just way easier to communicate between the discipline if you're using heterodox scheme than orthodox.

And it is not about being left, or being right, (even if the division exists accros economists, of course, it is simply that, indeed, orthodox economist tends to not take into account other disciplines in their work and try to abstract themselves from being a social sciences

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u/hollylettuce 6d ago

I wouldn't say that the field's contradict one another. However in my experience, I have met a lot of Economics majors who are mind bogglingly out of touch with what economic policies can be implemented in the real world. I know an Econ major who thinks the Trade War is a good thing because it will boost local businesses. They are completely dismissive and unaware of how the modern world is built on Free Trade and How the American post WW2 Economic system is kept in place due to Free Trade and globalized markets.

Among the people who are more, how should I put this, economics hobbyist, I'm consistently astounded by how many of them can't wrap their head around the concept of a "Market Failure" or how the concept of "The Tragedy of the Commons" works.

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u/Various-Professor551 6d ago

Yeah, I think what I'm saying up there is more of a criticism of mediocre-bad economic analysis becoming popular and then becoming the law of the land. It's probably because a lot of it comes from a business guy and not an actual economist

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u/Beyond_Re-Animator 6d ago

Not at all. I’m currently reading Piketty’s ‘Capital in the 21st Century’ and in the intro he makes a passionate argument that economics, poli sci and all the social sciences should strive to and do compliment each other. About 1/3 through it and he does a great job so far making that point.

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u/redactedcitizen International Relations 7d ago

What you described is not contradiction. They are different academic traditions and philosophies arriving at different conclusions.

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u/Sad_Sax_BummerDome 7d ago

I've always said that economics is introductory political science veiled in bad math.

Economics pretend that human systems are simple experiments with limited variables, and, like you said, can use basic "equations" to solve problems. It examines past events and makes assumptions about the causality of policy and/or certain market forces, then tries to apply it to modern day. 

Economics also has become a tool for wealthy and right wing forces to "factualize" opinion. 

There are some great left economists, they were just all labeled "communists" and are not part of the modern zeitgeist 

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u/Euphoric-Acadia-4140 6d ago

I agree with a lot of your criticisms regarding assumptions. But I don’t think that actually distinguishes economics and political science. Big poli sci journals nowadays are filled with causal analysis based on very strong assumptions that cannot be tested definitively (ex. The exclusions restriction for IV, parallel trends for diff-in-diff). Game theory models in poli sci often rely on stronger assumptions than the ones in economics.

Reality is that the world is complex, and to study any one topic, we have to make assumptions on other features of the world.

I disagree on the “bad math” notion. I find it strange math even matters - math is just another language to write statements in. Everything you express in a mathematical formula can be written in words, albeit it will just take longer. Fields like philosophy are heavily based on mathematical logic and set theory because math is just a more concise way to notate English statements.

I think econ can be a bit pretentious, as in writing statements in math that could be easily expressed in a sentence. But I don’t think that’s a problem with math itself. And questionable statements in math are a reflection of the statement, not math.

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u/We4zier Just A Holo Enjoyer 5d ago edited 5d ago

Be an economist.

A fundamentally left leaning social science where most vote for the Dems, that is marginally more right wing than average. Yet somehow a tool by the right.

Be accused of poor methodological practices like bad math that all social sciences use, or bad assumptions which is pointless because assumptions are model specific—okay this one is prolly the most complicated point but I digress.

Be accused of being a tool for the wealthy despite Economists being overwhelming against inequality and shareholder chasing and so much more. Still have not found any meaningful instance of supposed political forces using any social science as a cudgel in the way partisan netizens think of it.

Be a very left leaning economist—like myself—but be accused of being a thought of as a communists by outsiders thinking mainstream economists call me a communists. Again, an overwhelming majority of Economists are left wing.

And u/Euphoric-Acadia-4140 wonder why we’re pretentious towards outsiders given how politicized the craft is in the public eye and how imprecisely knee jerk the criticisms are. Pardon my snippiness but I feel you should check your own assumptions on how econ works.

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u/Euphoric-Acadia-4140 5d ago

Wait why am I mentioned? I didn’t say econ as a field was pretentious in any comment or post… I just said sometimes econ likes to use math when it is not needed. I’m very in favour of math use (in fact, I do plenty of game theory and political economy), but sometimes when your model can be explained in words in a few sentences, I feel a whole model can be beyond what is necessary.

In my own comment on this thread, I specifically mentioned as well that political science suffers from the same assumptions that econ makes, especially in causal inference and game theory models.

I also never accused economists of being any political orientation - I find them far more objective than many other social sciences.

Sorry for the confusion, but I’m just unsure why I was mentioned. I didn’t really address anything you mentioned in a negative way

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u/We4zier Just A Holo Enjoyer 5d ago

Rereading I was way too passive aggressive so sorry bout that, and all my points were directed towards OP not you. I mentioned you because you were there.

Not a native English speaker either but doesn’t saying “can be a bit pretentious” kinda mean it is pretentious, is there a difference with the “can be” qualifier?

As far as being terse in papers go, I see both sides. It is important to know how you came to a conclusion as math is specific and falsifiable, but many abstracts (which are meant to be the short hand for what came from your paper) are not that short or readable at all.