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Editor’s Introduction, FSE Papers and Proceedings

I am pleased to edit this special issue of the FSE which includes selected papers from the annual meetings of the Association for Social Economics (ASE) at the Allied Social Sciences Meetings in Philadelphia in January. This is the second year in which the papers and proceedings have been edited by the ASE President-Elect, who is also responsible for the ASE program. The format allows the President-Elect to construct the program with an eye toward curating the collection of papers that will appear in the FSE. The theme for this year’s meetings was “The Democratic Crisis and the Responsibility of Economics.” As stated in the Call for Papers (CfP), “both the Brexit vote and the subsequent election of President Trump can be read in part as rejections of the authority and privileges of experts who advise democratic governments in pursuit of economic wellbeing and other valued goals.” The CfP prompted scholars to consider whether, to what degree, and in what ways the economics profession contributed to the rise of what is now commonly referred to as “populism” in the US, Britain, the European continent, and beyond. After many decades in which the ideologies of political and economic liberalism (including global neoliberalism) appeared to be secure and immune to challenges from the left or right, and during which the authority of economists was widely if grudgingly accepted, a wave of angry, nationalist, nativist, anti-intellectual movements now threatens the liberal project and the relevance of the economics profession. Those suffering the consequences are not the 1% targeted by the popular, progressive movements of just a few years ago. To date the financial elite are the primary beneficiaries, at least in the US where there is a pronounced move toward regressive tax reform.