Artículos de economistas "austríacos" de interés para sociólogos (y otra gente de mal vivir)

Aunque la descripción de Wonkapistas sea la de "anotaciones de un sociólogo liberal", casi nunca pongo en relación ambas cuestiones, la sociología y el liberalismo o la sociología y el libre mercado. Recuerdo ahora, de todos modos, una anotación sobre un artículo de Klein y Stern titulado "Sociology and Classical Liberalism" y otra sobre un texto de Tyler Cowen sobre las relaciones entre sociología y economía. Viene este recordatorio a cuento de unos cuantos papers o artículos con los que me he topado hoy haciendo una búsqueda de bibliografía. Se trata de textos escritos por economistas pertenecientes a la tradición austríaca (la de Hayek y Von Mises) que se ocupan de temas antes menos frecuentados por los economistas y más "propios" de los sociólogos. Los puentes entre la ciencia económica y la sociología no hacen más que crecer y, creo, los más transitables son los que se tienden desde la economía institucionalista y la austríaca.

En fin, los artículos son los siguientes (todos ellos disponibles gratuitamente, normalmente como un pdf).

Steven Horwitz, de quien ya comenté aquí su "The functions of the family in the Great Society", ha escrito en los últimos años otros dos papers sobre la familia desde una perspectiva, digamos, hayekiana. De ellos, el que, en principio, más me ha llamado la atención es "Is the family an spontaneous order?", sobre todo por lo que sugiere este trozo de sus conclusiones:

The interesting conclusion we might draw is that a fully spontaneously ordered family cannot provide the socialization necessary for the spontaneous order of the Great Society to survive. If children require this sort of socialization to understand and respect the rules and structure of the Great Society, it may well be that families have to restrict the degree to which they are organized like the very Great Society whose survival depends on said families organizing themselves effectively. Some significant degree of hierarchy and command may well be necessary for the sort of instruction that socialization for living in two sorts of worlds at once requires. [...] The challenge of helping children understand and respect all of these distinctions is perhaps greater now than its ever been, and it is parents and family who are best positioned to do this cruical work. Unfortunately, the need for this complex socialization process is becoming greater at time when the ways in which the family as a social institution seems to be increasingly centered around serving the more self-oriented needs of parents might well be weakening its effectiveness at providing children with the competencies they need for that more complex adult world.

El siempre generoso Institute of Economic Affairs nos regala esta vez Rescuing social capital from social democracy, un librito de John Meadowcroft y Mark Pennington. Trata de un concepto profusamente utilizado en sociología y economía, así como en otras disciplinas, el de "capital social" y de cómo el tratamiento habitual que se hace de él lleva a proponer intervenciones estatales para, digámoslo así, acelerar la acumulación de este tipo de capital, en el supuesto de que tiene consecuencias benéficas, en el terreno político y el económico. Como pueden imaginar, el libro contiene una crítica de este nuevo tipo de intervencionismo público, argumentando, seguramente con bastante razón, que el libre funcionamiento de los mercados puede producir las dosis necesarias de capital social. Así se señala en la presentación del libro en la web:

Many social democrats believe that the failure of past government interventions in social and economic life can be explained by the absence of social capital, and that government must intervene to create that social capital. This argument is comprehensively undermined in this Hobart Paper. The authors argue that government attempts to undertake 'cultural planning' to create social capital are subject to exactly the same problems that led economic and industrial planning to fail. In order for democratic systems to work, they must be limited to co-ordinating certain core political functions. Markets will generate attributes such as trust and non-discrimination, which are necessary to oil the wheels of both commercial and political society.

En una línea muy similar, Carilli, Coyne y Leeson están a punto de publicar en la Review of Austrian Economics su artículo "Government intervention and the structure of social capital". Su resumen reza así:

Over the past decade, policymakers and scholars have devoted increasing attention to the nature and role of social capital in the functioning of society. We examine the implications of government attempts to manipulate the existing structure of social capital to create homogeneity among agents. We find that these attempts can weaken, erode or destroy existing social capital. We conclude with policy implications regarding government efforts to create or manipulate social capital.

Coyne también es autor, junto con Peter Boettke de un artículo que puede ser útil para entender nuestra transición, y la política del perdón (al menos implícito) que muchos practicaron entonces como modo de asegurar un futuro en paz y prosperidad. Se trata de "The political economy of forgiveness". Éste es su último párrafo, que condensa los principales hallazgos del trabajo, y que sugiere un paper muy interesante y provocativo:

The overarching theme is that focus must be on the possibilities of the future as compared to remedying the past. The pursuit of justice and reconciliation are beneficial only to the extent that they contribute to the future of the new order. Beyond that, the pursuit of justice will bankrupt the future of the system of cooperation and production and the ability of citizens to break from the past.

Por último, un artículo de Gene Callahan, "Reconciling Weber and Mises on understanding human action", también muy apetitoso para quienes, como yo, creemos que los puentes entre economía y sociología hay que tenderlos desde la tradición más individualista de la segunda, en buena medida representada por Max Weber. Éste es el abstract del paper de Callahan:

Max Weber and Ludwig von Mises were two of the twentieth century’s foremost theorists of human action. Furthermore, Mises held Weber, his senior by some seventeen years, in great esteem and often discussed his theories, even weaving some, such as Weber’s model of ideal types, deeply into the fabric of his own social thought. However, at least at first glance, there seems to be a deep rift between the two men’s conceptions about the rationality of action. Weber classified “social actions” into several distinct categories, some of which he saw as exhibiting little, if any, rationality. Mises, in contrast, held that all action is rational by conceptual necessity. Various writers have taken their views to be obviously incompatible, among them, Mises himself. This paper suggests that the appearance of a conflict is produced by the failure to discern that Weber and Mises were addressing different sorts of questions and constructing frameworks to support different modes of analyzing social phenomena. I contend that, if that divergence of aim is properly understood, then the apparent contradiction will be seen as illusory.

Que les aproveche la lectura.