Abstract

Some understanding of what ‘political philosophy’ and ‘economics’ are is presupposed by the title to this article. It is useful to begin by briefly setting out what those understandings will be. Political philosophy for my purposes here will be taken as equivalent to normative social theory. Political philosophy's concerns may be centred on the institutions and actions of the state – on politics more narrowly construed – but I shall include all forms of social organization, including specifically decentralized ones like anarchy and the market, within the scope of political philosophy as here understood. This understanding of political philosophy may be rather broader than that adopted in other contributions to this volume, but, given the nature of economists’ preoccupations within political theory, the greater breadth is necessary.