No Time for Utopia
Most political thought is βideal theoryβ: its arguments are based on an idealized world in which important aspects of reality are abstracted away. Abstraction isnβt necessarily a bad thing β in the contrary, it is often necessary in science β but it isnβt self-evident that the results of abstractions and idealizations are (always) applicable to the real world, and if theory doesnβt descend from the ideal world to reality it turns into an intellectual game without practical relevance; or worse, as the case of neoclassical economics illustrates. In that case abstraction and idealization resulted in a βtheoryβ that explains nothing,...