The British historical school in political economy : its history and significance

Abstract

This dissertation summarizes the methodological views of each of the major participants in the Nineteenth Century British Methodenstreit in Political Economy and isolates those currents in Nineteenth Century economic methodology which have persisted into the Twentieth Century. Among those involved in the British Methodenstreit I have examined the relevant writings of Walter Bagehot, John E. Cairnes, J. K. Ingram, Richard Jones, T. E. C. Leslie, Alfred Marshall, David Symes, and William Whewell. Three major conclusions arise from this study. First, each of the writers considered possessed a somewhat ideosyncratic conception of the scope and procedures appropriate to economic inquiry. In this respect, then, it is misleading to speak simply of Historical and Orthodox "schools," since these labels have frequently been interpreted as denoting homogeneous points of view. Second, those fundamental characteristics which were shared in common by writers within each of the two methodological traditions are not the characteristics which have frequently received the attention of the intellectual historian. The Historical School, for example, has often been associated with its German counterpart and portrayed as a reaction against all economic theorizing. Instead of disposing of economic theory, however, the typical British Historicist of the period prior to the 1890's was interested in tying the existing theory to specific institutional contexts, thus integrating into economic analysis some important behavioral constraints. So far as this attempt was successful it resulted in economic theories yielding definite predictions and testable consequences, as opposed to a theory which was nebulous enough to explain everything but which predicted only ex post..