Politicizing the economic: Capitalist hegemony, procedural liberalism, and popular discourse

This dissertation explores the relationship between political-economic discourses and existing economic relations in the United States. More specifically, it investigates how the economy and its relation to politics are conceptualized in academic and nonacademic discourses, the effects of these conceptualizations, and how many of these conceptualizations can be improved upon. In the form of three case studies, I critically analyze examples of popular discourses during President Jimmy Carter's administration and the work of Robert Dahl and John Rawls, two procedural liberals whose theories have had a substantial influence on political science. Despite Dahl's and Rawls' explicit concerns about the economy's effects on democracy and equality, they often end up assuming the existence of inexorable economic laws and treating economics, politics, and culture as distinct, autonomous spheres. Yet such conceptualizations are problematic both theoretically and politically.; Consequently, in the constructive, theoretical part of the dissertation, I develop a novel theory of the hegemony of social practices and demonstrate that this theory offers a more productive framework than procedural liberalism does for analyzing politics, economics, culture, and their interrelation. In formulating this alternative theoretical approach, I draw not only on the strengths of Antonio Gramsci and anti-essentialist Marxian theory, but also on the insights of post-structuralist political, democratic, and feminist theory, especially with regard to concepts of power, the political, and subjectivity. Within this Gramscian theory of hegemony, economic relations are conceptualized as contingent, historical, and socially constituted, which means that citizens no longer have to accommodate themselves to oppressive economic relations or to see themselves as passive victims of an immutable economic system, as political science and popular discourses all too often suggest. The dissertation's title, politicizing the economic, in part refers to this alternative theorization of economic practices. In addition, politicizing the economic refers to increasing political, especially democratic, control---although not necessarily state or centralized control---over economic relations.