ABSTRACT
The process of relating economic thought to policy involves the task of bridging the gap between general ideas and the particular uses to which they are put. This task can be approached either by attempting to connect the tacit or declared methods and objectives of policy with the general corpus of doctrine from which they are derived, or by endeavouring to trace the effects of the policy conclusions drawn from given theories.2 Both approaches demand an intimate knowledge of the circumstances of the time, and most historians of doctrine have revealed pardonable shortcomings in this respect. But, beyond this, they have inexcusably neglected the gap between theory and policy,3 and have virtually ignored the underworld of economic thought and the processes whereby theories are propagated.4 It is, therefore, hardly surprising that their activities have usually confirmed the economic historians’ suspicion that the systematic study of economic ideas contributes little to the explanation of policy.
