One Movement, Two Registers: Scholarship, Advocacy, and their Division of Labor in the Pluralism-in-Economics Movement

Claudius Gräbner-Radkowitsch

No 181, ICAE Working Papers from Johannes Kepler University, Institute for Comprehensive Analysis of the Economy

Abstract: This chapter examines the coexistence of scholarly and advocacy “registers” within the pluralism-in-economics (PiE) movement and argues that distinguishing between them is both philosophically defensible and strategically necessary. The movement combines academic debates on pluralism, methodology, and epistemology with activist efforts aimed at institutional reform in economics. This dual structure creates two central challenges. The first, termed structural entanglement, refers to the unavoidable intertwining of epistemic and normative arguments in a policy-relevant discipline where the same actors move between scholarly and political roles. The second, epistemic capture, occurs when the authority of scholarly discourse is used to legitimize conclusions whose warrant is primarily normative. Rejecting both positivist claims of value-free science and relativist attempts to collapse the fact-value distinction, the chapter defends a middle position inspired by Veblen, Myrdal, feminist standpoint theory, and perspectival realism. This approach acknowledges the inevitability of value-ladenness in inquiry while maintaining the possibility of evaluating claims according to epistemic standards. Building on this framework, the chapter proposes a “perspectival adequacy assessment” based on procedural openness to criticism and cross-perspectival comparison. Empirically, the chapter discusses examples of blurred scholarly and advocacy functions within and around the PiE movement. As a constructive response, it advocates “register transparency” and a division of labor between scholarly and advocacy functions. The chapter concludes that preserving a distinction between epistemic and normative warrant is essential for maintaining the analytical credibility and transformative potential of pluralist economics.

Date: 2026-05
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