“Generalized Darwinism” and the quest for an evolutionary theory of policy-making

Christian Schubert

Journal of Evolutionary Economics, 2014, vol. 24, issue 3, 479-513

Abstract: According to the “Generalized Darwinism” movement (GD), the three principles of variation, selection and retention/replication (labeled “Darwinian” in some variants of GD) can and should be used as a meta-theoretical framework for the explanation of evolutionary processes in the sociocultural domain. Despite their biological origins, the various variants of GD aim at redefining these principles in a way that is supposed to abstract from any domain-specific particulars. We argue that in order to qualify as an adequate meta-theoretical framework for evolutionary economics, GD should not only inspire and guide positive theory development in evolutionary economics, but also be able to support viable practical policy implications. Examining its potential to do so, however, leads us to the conclusion that in its specific deductive variant proposed by Hodgson & Knudsen (HKGD), it risks systematically misguiding evolutionary policy advice. Competing variants, such as the one proposed by Pelikan, fare better in this regard. Copyright Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2014

Keywords: Evolution; Selection; Darwinism; Ontology; Continuity hypothesis; Evolutionary theory of policy-making; A1; B4; B52; D6; O1 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2014
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (8)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1007/s00191-013-0304-x (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:joevec:v:24:y:2014:i:3:p:479-513

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/economics/journal/191/PS2

DOI: 10.1007/s00191-013-0304-x

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Evolutionary Economics is currently edited by Uwe Cantner, Elias Dinopoulos, Horst Hanusch and Luigi Orsenigo

More articles in Journal of Evolutionary Economics from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().