Malcolm Gladwell has written a very positive review of Jerry Adelman’s Albert Hirschman bio, [amazon_link id=”0691155674″ target=”_blank” ]Worldly Philosopher[/amazon_link]. The review also offers a superb thumbnail sketch of Hirschman’s character and philosophy. I’m looking forward to reading the book myself.

[amazon_image id=”0691155674″ link=”true” target=”_blank” size=”medium” ]Worldly Philosopher: The Odyssey of Albert O. Hirschman[/amazon_image]

Meanwhile it sent me back to thumb through [amazon_link id=”0674276604″ target=”_blank” ]Exit, Voice and Loyalty[/amazon_link], and I found this paragraph that speaks to my current preoccupations:

“Exit and voice, that is market and non-market forces, that is economic and political mechanisms, have been introduced as two principal actors of strictly equal rank and importance. … I hope to demonstrate to political scientists the usefulness of economic concepts and to economists the usefulness of political concepts. This reciprocity has been lacking in recent interdisciplinary work as economists have claimed that the concepts developed for the purpose of analyzing phenomena of scarcity and resource allocation can be successfully used for explaining political phenomena as diverse as power, democracy and nationalism. They have thus succeeded in occupying large portions of the neighbouring discipline.”

[amazon_image id=”0674276604″ link=”true” target=”_blank” size=”medium” ]Exit, Voice and Loyalty: Responses to Decline in Firms, Organizations and States[/amazon_image]

He hoped the book would restore the balance, but the succeeding decades were to be characterised by the primacy of market mechanisms in political decisions. Perhaps that’s just starting to change now.