ABSTRACT

This chapter critiques mainstream liberal economic narratives on international trade and economic openness, arguing that democratic theory and popular political discourse has been often too quick to accept attempts by these narratives to naturalize and hide power in the economy, to accept these narratives as the result of objective and neutral study of the economic and social realms rather than as contestable and ideologically-loaded,1 and to accept that any realistic democratic project must work to accommodate itself to the imperatives of the economic order as portrayed by these narratives. In particular, as a central theme in these narratives,2 I will focus on the case mainstream economists make for free trade. Healthy democratic politics requires that citizens and their elected representatives have sound information upon which they can make informed decisions, and that we have a meaningful range of alternatives from which to choose. This, in turn, requires that public deliberations are based on empirically sound analyses of relevant social phenomenon, and that we are careful to avoid setting aside contestable normative claims as uncontestable givens. As our elected representatives attempt to determine public policy, and as citizens attempt to determine both who will represent them and attempt to participate in the decisions that govern the spaces of their everyday lives,4 there is less chance for sound decisions to the extent our deliberations deviate from these imperfect standards. My claim here is that the mainstream economic narratives on international economic openness substantially fail in these regards, and that these failures are largely due to neglecting the often hidden or submerged power in the assumptions employed.