Costs and Benefits of Pluralism in Economic Theory: A Critical Analysis of the Approach by U. Mäki and T.Lari

Abstract Book of the 12th International Academic Conference on Humanities and Social Sciences

Year: 2026

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Costs and Benefits of Pluralism in Economic Theory: A Critical Analysis of the Approach by U. Mäki and T.Lari

Leonid Tutov

ABSTRACT:

The relevance of this study is determined by the persistent state of theoretical and methodological pluralism in contemporary economics, as well as by the lack of consensus regarding its normative evaluation and its implications for scientific knowledge and economic policy. In this context, the work of Uskali Mäki and Teemu Lari is of particular interest, as it represents a systematic attempt to conceptualize pluralism in economic theory through an analysis of its costs and benefits. The aim of the paper is to provide a critical assessment of the approach proposed by Mäki and Lari and to reconsider the costs of pluralism they identify from the perspective of philosophy of science and methodological anarchism. To achieve this aim, the paper pursues several objectives: first, it reconstructs Mäki’s and Lari’s argument concerning the benefits and costs of a pluralistic organization of economics; second, it examines the normative and epistemological assumptions underlying their concept of “managed pluralism”; third, it compares this approach with the Feyerabendian tradition and with socio-rhetorical interpretations of economic knowledge, as articulated, in particular, in the works and interviews of Deirdre McCloskey. The main findings of the study demonstrate that the costs of pluralism emphasized by Mäki and Lari—namely cognitive complexity, disciplinary fragmentation, and institutional and communicative difficulties—should not be interpreted as incidental defects of a pluralistic economics. Rather, they function as necessary conditions for its epistemological, critical, and heuristic advantages. It is shown that cognitive complexity represents the price paid for abandoning reductionism, fragmentation serves as a mechanism of anti-dogmatic protection, and practical indeterminacy constitutes a form of epistemic responsibility in economic expertise. The paper concludes that attempts to optimize and institutionally regulate pluralism tend to weaken its critical potential and reproduce a latent form of methodological monism that is incompatible with the historical and social nature of economic knowledge.

Keywords: Anti-Dogmatism; Economic Expertise; Fragmentation; Cognitive Complexity; Reductionism