The Project of Pluralism

Introduction: The New Strategy Debate within Heterodox Economics

Heterodox economics is not doing particularly well. While the first public letters calling for pluralism in economics and a systematic integration of heterodox schools of thought were published more than 30 years ago (Abramovitz 1992), mainstream approaches still dominate the discipline. Neither the international financial crisis of 2007/2008 nor the more recent macroeconomic disruptions could challenge the axioms of mainstream economics and proliferate a more open and diverse economics discipline.  I analysed the core axioms of mainstream economics and the structural reasons for the “strange non-death of mainstream economics” in a related essay, that closed with a number of open questions:

• Why has it proven so difficult to establish a viable alternative to mainstream economics or significantly influence its trajectory, despite decades of extensive criticism?
• Why has heterodox economics not been more successful to make inroads to the mainstream? And why has "pluralist economics," the most prominent alternative paradigm to mainstream economics, not been more successful in changing the curriculum?
• What are realistic pathways for curriculum reform in the future, and what would a new economic science that lives up to the challenges of the poly-crisis look like?

A relatively recent debate, sparked by the book “Is There a Future for Heterodox Economics?” by Geoffrey Hodgson, published in 2019, dealt with some of these questions (see e.g. Chester 2021, Lavoie 2020, Heise 2023, Potts 2021, Ghilarducci 2023). Hodgson offered a number of explanations for the continued marginalization of mainstream economics despite the financial crisis of 2007 and the unfolding poly-crisis since then (and the incompetence of mainstream economics to provide appropriate answers).

Hodgson, who dismisses the label “heterodox” for himself, argues that heterodox economics misses a clear and coherent understanding of what ‘heterodox economics’ is and stands for, a lack of quality control in heterodox research, and an overpowering of heterodox theory by left-wing ideology. Others have understandably criticised these explanations, as they suggest that heterodox economists were solely responsible for their marginalization, missing out institutional and power-related factors.

Heise (2023) has instead proposed an “input-side” explanation for the marginalization of heterodox economics, building on the concept of economic, social and cultural capital developed by Bourdieu (1986). Economic capital consists in professorial positions and financial resources, social capital in informal networks, professional associations, journals, and cultural capital in distinguished non-academic positions, prestigious awards like the Nobel Prize, shared norms, or conventions. Without access to economic, social and symbolic capital, heterodox economics loses its ability to provide and produce accepted knowledge within the epistemic community of economists or, to put it differently, to continue participating in the “market of economic ideas” (ibid., 134). Against the background of  this “input-side” conceptualization the ‘market of economic ideas’, Heise points towards the “overwhelming dominance of a small number of private, business or market-oriented US elite universities in standardizing academic education (directly through the vast numbers of PhDs from their graduate schools, indirectly by being the prototype for worldwide curricula), gatekeeping major academic journals and introducing or legitimizing institutional incentives (such as rankings and scientific assessment exercises) that clearly privilege mainstream economics” (ibid., 141). Heise (ibid., 142) concludes:

The marginalization of heterodox economics that has taken place almost everywhere in the Western world is not the outcome of a fair competition on the market of economic ideas but the result of a very unscholarly ‘crowding out’ of paradigms which predominantly follow the methodological rules of the game.

While the institutionalist explanation for the marginalization of heterodox (or pluralist) economics put forward by Heise is compelling and depicts a realistic understanding of science as being shaped by and interrelated with societal power relations, it is still fruitful to reflect on the inherent shortcomings of the concepts of ‘heterodoxy’ or ‘pluralism’. While it is evident that critical approaches in economics face political and institutional marginalization—often due to systemic biases rather than inherent flaws—it remains necessary to ask: How can these approaches develop more effective strategies to challenge mainstream economics and gain greater influence?

It is precisely the systemic barriers for critical approaches that put alternative concepts and ‘labels’ under particular obligation to prove their strategic viability.  So, how helpful are the labels of ‘heterodox’ and especially ‘pluralist’ economics in the uphill battle against mainstream economics and the dominant economic policy paradigm? As Stilwell (2016, 42) notes, these "labels matter" because they "construct imagery and signal strategic choices." Paradigms are inherently political, organizing cooperation and conflict and shaping the consolidation or dissolution of intellectual hegemony, both in science and in society at large. The proliferation of alternative paradigms — ‘heterodox’, ‘real-world’, and ‘pluralist economics’ — has played a crucial role in contesting both mainstream economics and the ruling economic policy paradigm. These ‘labels’ may have been useful in the past decades, but are they the paradigmatic approaches we need for the present?

The Historical Evolvment of the Pluralism Debate in Economics

Let’s first take a look at the historical context of the strategy debate regarding heterodox and pluralist economics. Pluralism in economics is often seen as a relatively recent concept and is often traced back to the open letter by French students calling for a "post-autistic" economics education in the year 2000 (Fullbrook, 2002). However, viewing pluralism solely as a response to recent student dissatisfaction within an otherwise stable and unified discipline overlooks the deeply contested and evolving nature of economic science—unless one interprets ‘economics’ in an extremely narrow sense, confined to today's mainstream paradigm.

The history of economic thought reveals a series of paradigm shifts upheavals, each reflecting broader societal and political transformations. The rise of classical political economy in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, which championed the potential benefits of markets and capital accumulation, emerged alongside the ascendant bourgeoisie’s struggle against feudal and mercantilist restrictions (Jäger and Springler 2015). Classical economists, operating in a pre-disciplinary context, engaged with philosophical and statecraft issues, reflecting the interconnectedness of economic, political, and social thought (Shah 2014; Jessop and Sum 2001).

Marx’s critique of political economy, while building on classical ideas like the labor theory of value, introduced a powerful political critique of capitalist societal relations, which resonated with the growing workers’ movement and social democracy. This class-based view of the economy as a system of capitalist accumulation, where value derives from human labor, represented an inherently political approach that clashed with the legitimization needs of the bourgeoisie in the late 19th century (Jäger and Springler 2015).

The neoclassical paradigm that started to supersede the classical paradigm alongside with the institutionalization of 'economics' as an academic discipline in the 1870s, provided an a-political, deductive-mathematical model that naturalized the 'economy' as an autonomous sphere strictly separated from history, politics and social issues (ibid.). Both the 'disciplining' of the social sciences and the marginalization of political-economic (critical) approaches characterized the formation of “modern” social sciences and their mainstream biases during the 20th century.

In response to the deep and connected crisis of both laissez-faire capitalism and neoclassicism in the 1930s, the (so-called) Keynesian paradigm consolidated hand in hand with the expansion of the Fordist mode of accumulation. The Keynesian intellectual 'revolution', however, did not call into question the disciplinary closure of economics, and was, furthermore, already appropriated by the neoclassical paradigm by the end of the 1930s (ibid.).

The structural crisis of the Fordist mode of accumulation and the failure of Keynesian economic policy during the 1970s led to a massive revaluation of neoclassical approaches, which had never disappeared under the Keynesian paradigm. While the monetarist innovations as well as the political project of neoliberalism had already been formulated, the ideas of Hayek and Friedman did not receive sufficient political support in the 1950s and 1960s due to the negative experiences with laissez-faire capitalism (Brand 2010). The crises in the 1970s provided a window of opportunity for the re-formation of the hegemony of neoclassical and pro-market discourses in the field of economics, which, as pointed out above, went hand in hand with the consolidation of the neoliberal consensus in national and international politics. With the incorporation of concepts such as informational economics, game theory, agent theory, behavioral economics, complexity economics, statistical procedures and the spread of neoclassical methods to the realm of neighboring disciplines, the modern mainstream developed.

Since then, no paradigm has fundamentally challenged the dominance of neoclassical economics. However, the rise of heterodox economics since the 1980s, alongside critical theories in International Relations (Van Der Pijl 2012), reflects an ongoing societal conflict inherent in social sciences. Heterodox economics became a reservoir for critical and transdisciplinary economic thinking from the 1980s on. The “community of heterodox economists as manifested through their graduate programs, conferences, journals and identity” (Lee 2012, 337) developed into a relevant alternative to 'orthodox' approaches, but  never into  a  common  counter-hegemonic project. The concept of heterodoxy, with its emphasis on diversity and self-marginalization, became both a vehicle for alternative ideas and an obstacle to collective coordination.

The petition from a small number of economics students that demanded a “post-autistic” economic curriculum in Paris in the year 2000 represented a crucial intervention not only due to the subsequent international spread of the “post-autistic” movement (Fullbrook, 2002), but also because it articulated a common line of conflict. The term “post-autistic,” while rightly falling out of use due to its reliance on ableist stereotypes, nonetheless crystallized a generational frustration with economics education’s perceived detachment from societal realities.

Also, the concept of real-world economics, which partly developed in parallel to the “post-autistic” movement, partly devolved from it, emphasized the common claim of heterodox approaches to put forward a more realistic description of economic reality than the isolated, deductive-axiomatic world of mainstream economics. With its emphasis on alternative truth claims, the concept of real-world economics contributes to an important sharpening of the conflict, in the sense that the opposing analytical views of mainstream and non-mainstream approaches and the disproving of core elements of mainstream theories were addressed. On the other hand, the focus on 'better' or 'truer' theory shifts the debate to technical, empirical aspects and appears debatable from a critical realist view, arguing that any type of truth claim can be neither universal nor free of power-relations. Successfully challenging mainstream economics cannot, as Stilwell (2016, 45) puts it, “be just a matter of developing ‘better’ economic models (claiming higher values for explanatory capacity). It also has to be a political process”.

The concept of pluralism, finally, represents the most comprehensive as well as the most widespread meta-paradigmatic approach to reform economics. Indeed, it has been present since the emergence of heterodox economics. Interestingly, one could reconstruct the history of heterodox, real-world and 'post-autistic' economics also as different waves of the pluralism demand in economics. Olsen and Starr (2010) speak of a first wave of the pluralism demand in economics, which began in the late 1970s, when Austrian, Marxian, Sraffian, Post-Keynesian, and evolutionary-institutional economists challenged the dominance of post-war economic monism, though these alternative schools largely remained isolated from one another. A second wave emerged in the early 1990s, marked by a petition of 44 leading economists in the American Economic Review (Abramovitz et al. 1992) that denounced monism and supported the rise of pluralist associations such as the Association for Social Economics (ASE), the Association of Evolutionary Economics (AFEE), the Union for Radical Political Economy (URPE), the European Association for Evolutionary Political Economy (EAEPE), the International Association for Feminist Economics (IAFFE), and the International Confederation of Associations for Pluralism in Economics (ICAPE). Later, the Association for Heterodox Economics (AHE) and the International Initiative for the Promotion of Political Economics (IIPPE) and the International Network for Democratic Economic Planning (INDEP) also emerged.

In The call for a "post-autistic" economics education by a group of French students in the year 2000 can be seen as a third wave of the pluralism demand in economics, with student initiatives taking on a leading role. This movement gained momentum after the outbreak of the financial crisis in 2008, leading to heightened public interest in the failures of mainstream economics. The public letter by the International Student Initiative for Pluralism in Economics (ISIPE 2014) can be seen as the climax of this third wave of pluralism, which has since been receding.

More than ten years after the publication of the international student call, we must acknowledge that the impact of the project of pluralism on mainstream teaching, research, and policy remains limited. Why has it been so difficult to establish a viable alternative to mainstream economics or significantly influence its trajectory, despite extensive criticism and the emergence of pluralist movements?

The Complicated Relationship between Scientific and Public (Economic) Discourses

To evaluate the strategic viability and shortcomings of the concept of pluralism or pluralist economics to tackle the mainstream and transform the curriculum, it is helpful to first take a step back and understand better the relationship between science and the societal institutions it is embedded in. The relationship between scientific discourses, practices and institutions on the one hand and societal discourses, policies and structures on the other hand is complicated and complex, especially in the case of (mainstream) economics and the (dominant) economic policy paradigm.

Following a Gramscian understanding of science as a part of civil society, changes of hegemonic paradigms in science develop in complex interaction with the wider hegemony that manifests itself on the terrain of (transnational) civil society. Economics departments, academics and journals are part of a much broader network of economic knowledge creation, taking place in think tanks, political parties, public media, etc. This extended field of economics with its various institutions, discourses and public intellectuals plays a key role in providing ideas and policy advice; it shapes public decision-making and understandings of ‘sound’ policies. This extended field of economics plays a mediating role between the hegemonic paradigm within economics and the hegemonic narratives and political projects within civil society. As Joan Robinson (1962, 7) put it eloquently, economics has “always been partly a vehicle for the ruling ideology for each period as well as partly a method of scientific investigation”.

In the 1990s a paradigm-centered approach developed in international political economy (IPE) and neighboring disciplines. It can be seen as a self-reflective development within social sciences, where social science approaches reflect the development of scientific paradigms and its implications for wider political developments (especially regarding mainstream economics).  As Stahl (2025) has described, this paradigmatic approach—sometimes labelled as the ‘ideational turn’—“views economic theory both as the medium through which policy battles take place and as portraying a shift in dominant economic theories” (ibid., 2). Crucially, this perspective does not imply that policy changes are fundamentally caused by changes in the scientific realm:

Large macroeconomic shifts might be caused by movements of the economic world’s ‘tectonic plates’, including energy prices, class organization, and economic globalization. Yet, the form in which these factors were contested by governments, central banks, and international institutions took place within the ‘economic style of reasoning’ (Berman, 2022) or even as debates over concrete econometric models (Watson, 2014). (Stahl 2025, 2).

This means that the paradigm-focused perspective that came with the ‘ideational turn’ does not necessarily come with a constructivist understanding that dismisses more structuralist or materialist factors that contribute to political-economic transformations but largely serves as a useful lens for analyzing and conceptualizing the bidirectional relationship between science and societal discourses in certain periods.

Stahl (2025) and other observers have correctly pointed out that debates about macroeconomics and geoeconomic strategies are increasingly detached from debates in the economics profession and that the paradigm-focused approach to understand the relationship between economics and the ruling policy paradigm(s) is getting less useful as an analytical tool. However, when asking for an approach that has the potential to tackle mainstream economics and bring forward a new economic vision, the deeper connection between societal and scientific discourses is still crucial to understand.

So, it is complicated: The ruling economic discourse that currently evolves, which is processing the emerging multipolar world order with China as a new superpower, does slowly and gradually lose its close relation with ruling scientific narratives and opinions of mainstream economics. It is an open question, if and how a new post-neoliberal hegemonic paradigm can take shape without guidance and legitimation from (mainstream) economics.  Mainstream economics, on the other hand, can, at least for a while, continue with its ‘standard program’ without the ruling economic discourse precisely reflecting the assumptions and outcomes of mainstream theories and models. However, such representation in the political realm would still be crucial for the continued societal and political relevance of mainstream economics. Thus, while the ties between mainstream economics and dominant discourse are weakening, their residual interdependence creates unpredictable dynamics.

While the ruling economic discourse and mainstream economics can, at least in the short and medium term, move apart from one another, there are good reasons to argue that a progressive paradigm both in (economic) science and in the public (economic) discourse would need and depend on each other.

Why is that? First, advancing a progressive economic paradigm requires robust, concrete, and highly sophisticated analyses and concepts to reshape the economy into a socially and ecologically sustainable system. In contrast to merely defending the status quo—or supplementing it with certain (green) industrial policies or tariffs—a truly transformative approach necessitates extensive scientific groundwork to understand and navigate the extremely complex and dynamic nature of international macroeconomic transformation.

Second, transforming prevailing scientific discourses and their associated curricula demands the creation of a powerful societal alliance external to the academic sphere. Such an alliance must exert pressure on the self-perpetuating cycle of academic reproduction. Effectively displacing mainstream economics and institutionalizing genuinely transformative economic approaches would require close coordination among a diverse array of stakeholders. These include scientists, intellectuals, students, research departments, universities, academic journals, publishers, research networks, institutes, think tanks, foundations, non-governmental organizations, politicians, political parties, journalists, and media organizations—a comprehensive science-political network that connects the scientific realm with the wider civil society.

Thus, coming back to the strategic viability of ‘pluralist economics’ to challenge mainstream economics, one can conclude: The counter-hegemonic potential of pluralist economics, or any paradigmatic scientific approach, depends on its ability to link discursive-institutional change in economics to a broader process of societal change.

The Paradoxes of Pluralism

This is the weak spot of pluralist economics. Even though the demand for pluralism has been successful in many respects, it has so far not led to the creation of robust alliances among the aforementioned stakeholders capable of creating countervailing power and institutionalizing viable alternatives. To date, no science-political network has emerged that has the potential to challenge mainstream economics via effectively bridging the gap between the scientific realm and the broader field of civil society.

Moreover, the demand for pluralism stands in stark contrast to the wider societal quest for progressive alternatives to (post-)neoliberal narratives and political approaches amid the deepening organic crisis of global capitalism. Both left- and right-wing forces have, at times, drawn upon heterodox economic thought (Becker and Weissenbacher 2016). However, the pluralist project cannot afford to align itself with any specific political faction without compromising its fundamental principles. Relying on political neutrality has proven to be an unpromising foundation for forging transformative alliances across civil society—alliances that might effectively rival the formidable political network underpinning mainstream economics. This conundrum is referred to as the “paradox of pluralism” (De Langhe 2010, 795), meaning “that pluralism is self-defeating because it cannot claim its own truth lest it be inconsistent”.

Without linkages between science and the wider field of civil society, the concept of pluralism can be easily instrumentalized, e.g. by ordo-liberal, Keynesian or even mainstream forces. Though pluralism is a desirable and highly advanced proposal, it lacks the political and strategic capacities to link discursive-institutional change in economics to a broader process of societal change.

The practical realization of pluralism is complicated by a further aspect. The foundations for the current interior hegemony of neoclassical economics were already set in the late 19th century, when the neoclassical paradigm crowded out the classical paradigm alongside the institutionalization of ‘economics’ as an academic discipline and the separation of social sciences. Thus, any challenger of neoclassicism has to question the modern scientific division of labor and put forward the vision of a truly transdisciplinary, historical and critical economic science. Many heterodox schools orientate themselves in a trans- or post-disciplinary framework, but the demand for pluralism is restricted to the discipline of economics. Though "interdisciplinary pluralism” is part of the demand for pluralism (ISIPE, 2014), the concept of pluralist economics quickly encounters the limits of the discipline. This can be understood as a second paradox of pluralism. The realization of the concept of pluralism would imply a transformation of the disciplinary organization of social sciences itself.

Conclusion: Replacing mainstream economics is not a scientific, but a political project

Pluralism represents an ambitious and theoretically desirable objective, yet it proves exceedingly difficult to implement in practice. Two paradoxes are built into the concept of pluralism, undermining its potential. First, such a far-reaching transformation of economics would be dependent on a political alliance that bridges the institutionalized scientific realm with the broader terrain of civil society. However, the concept of pluralism is obliged to maintain a neutral position and cannot become an element in a broader, transformative project. Second, the concept of pluralist economics demands ‘interdisciplinary pluralism’, but restricts itself to the discipline of economics. Tackling the roots of mainstream economics and its dominance, however, would require transcending the disciplinary boundaries between social sciences themselves.

Consequently, the concept of pluralist economics falls short of possessing the capacity to politically contest mainstream economics and only partially contributes to fostering a more critical and transdisciplinary approach in economic science.

In summary, pluralism alone is incapable of overcoming the a-political and mono-disciplinary nature of economics. As a result, pluralist economics currently lacks the political and strategic mechanisms necessary to couple discursive-institutional shifts with a larger transformative project.

Any effort to overcome mainstream economics must be conceived as a deeply political undertaking, one that is intimately linked with the emergence of new collective subjectivities amid the unfolding crisis of global capitalism in the context of ecological breakdown. A transformative strategy for economics should therefore situate itself within this broader historical and political context and critically interrogate the existing disciplinary structures that have long defined the field. As Freeman (2016, 27) has pointed out, economics “as a distinct subject or discipline did not even exist until the early twentieth century, and there is no reason to suppose that it will inevitably continue to do so”.

It is important to acknowledge that the concept of pluralism, or pluralist economics, is quite successful on several levels and offers strategic advantages. Its moderate, non-antagonistic approach facilitates dialogue with mainstream lecturers and university departments, as well as engagement with conventional economics students—many of whom may be skeptical of more radical alternatives. In this regard, pluralism remains a valuable, pragmatic, and constructive approach that will still play an important role in the future. However, if we critically consider its underlying ambition—namely, a profound and systemic transformation of the economics curriculum—it becomes clear that such a goal has not been realized over the past decades and is unlikely to be achieved in the foreseeable future. This outcome is attributable not only to the institutional resilience of mainstream economics but also to the inherent strategic limitations within the concept of pluralism itself.

Given these considerations, it is imperative to ask: What scientific approach or project holds the potential to create a meaningful connection between discursive-institutional reform in science and a broader process of societal change, while also overcoming the disciplinary fragmentation of economics? In the related essay, “Towards a New Economics of Collapse and Construction”, I will introduce the debate on democratic economic planning as a promising foundation for such an endeavor.

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