Erik Reinert — Towards a better understanding of convergence and divergence: or, how the present EU strategy – at the expense of the economic periphery – neglects the theories that once made Europe successful

This new working paper attempts to address some of the main problems of the European Union today. The main thesis is that the Weltanschauung and the economic narrative on which the European project has been based have changed radically since the inception of the European Project, from one conducive to convergence and cohesion to another which is conducive to divergence and, in the last instance – I shall argue – to a form of internal colonialism towards the economic periphery.

The field of Science and Technology employs the term sociotechnical imaginary [1] about the collective narratives and visions of social futures and of the common good. I shall argue that the European Union has moved away from the sociotechnical imaginary, or narrative, that dominated after World War II. I shall argue that this post WW II Marshall Plan Narrative (MPN) gave way to an equilibrium-based Neo-Classical Economics Narrative with an added innovation rhetoric, which I shall argue is based on a fairly shallow understanding of innovation (which I shall call NC+I)....

Worthwhile post. The working paper looks good, too, but I haven't yet read it.

He sums up the problem in economics as it is practiced in relation to policy formulation. Conventional economics is a simplification that tends toward oversimplification. Policy based on conventional economists' modeling assumptions and methodological choices risks being unrealistic. This has consequences that manifest not only economically but also socially and politically.

In other words, we must attempt to perceive the complex realities behind simple numbers.

Developing Economics
Towards a better understanding of convergence and divergence: or, how the present EU strategy – at the expense of the economic periphery – neglects the theories that once made Europe successful

Erik Reinert | Professor of Technology Governance and Development Strategies at Tallinn University of Technology, Estonia, Senior Research Fellow at NORISS, Norwegian Institute of Strategic Studies, in Oslo., and Founder and Chairman of the Other Canon Foundation