The Thirteenth Chime: Experimentalism and the Global Economy
| Published date | 01 November 2008 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2230.2008.00727.x |
| Date | 01 November 2008 |
| Author | Andrew T. F. Lang |
REVIEWARTICLE
TheThirteenth Chime: Experimentalism and the Global
Economy
AndrewT. F. Lang
n
Roberto Mangabeira Unger, Free Trade Reimagined:The World Division of Labor
and the Method of Economics.Princeton, NJ. Pri nceton University Press, 2007.
xþ229 pp. Hardbackd17.9 5.
More than a decade ago, international lawyers were criticised as ‘handmaidens’of
globalisation, both deeplyimplicated in the changes associated with globalisation
and at the same time relatively inattentive to them.
1
It was a criticism that hit
home. In the intervening years, this neglect has become a preoccupation, as we
international lawyers continue our iterative re£ections on the problem of our
own role in establishing contemporary forms of globalisation. Roberto Manga-
beiraUnger,i n his new book FreeTradeReimagined, may help us to write a di¡erent
chapter in the story of our relationship with globalisation, as he invites us to join
his critical project of rem aking globali sation through law.
It is a book with grand ambition, which introduces an attractive new vision of
a fundamentally reimagined global economic order. Yet, for all its ambition, the
book is narrowly focussed on questionsrelated to the economics of free trade. For
Unger (as for so many others) ‘the global trading regime is the heart of the emer-
ging form of globalization’ (167). It follows that if we are to reimagine globalisa-
tion, wemust begin by reimagining the organisationof the worldtrading system.
And since the landscape of normative discourse about trade is dominatedby tech-
nical economic arguments about the advantages and disadvantages of ‘free trade’,
the book spendsas much time discussingthe detail of the doctrine ofcomparative
advantage, and of orthodox economic teachi ngs about free trade, as it does in set-
ting out its grandvision for a tradingorder remade alongexperimentalist lines. In
this essay, I do not intend to focus on Unger’s speci¢c criticisms of trade theory,
but ratherconcentrate onthose aspects (and there aremany) which are of broader
appeal to lawyers interested in questions around international economic govern-
ance.In the ¢rst and second sections, I set out Unger’sexperimentalist vision,then
o¡er my own re£ections on it. While aspects of this vision remain underdeve-
loped, and certain key questions remain overlooked, I ¢nd in it the seeds of an
interesting new approach, in a ¢eld of enquiry in which new thinki ng of this
kind remainsrare. In the third section, I changetack, and re£ect onthe approaches
that Unger adopts as a lawyer engaging with economic theory. It is a positio n in
which lawyers interested in the international economy often ¢nd themselves ^
n
Law Department,London School of Economics a nd Social and PoliticalScie nces.
1 P. Alston,‘The Myopia of the Handmaidens: International Lawyers and Globalization’ (1997) 8(3)
EuropeanJournal of International Law 435^448.
r2008 The Author.Journal Compilation r2008 The Modern Law Review Limited.
Published by BlackwellPublishing, 9600 Garsington Road,Oxford OX4 2DQ,UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA
(200 8) 71(6) 1015^1031
compelled to engage with economic discourse as the dominant normative lan-
guageof their ¢eld, but havingto do so without the trappingsof formal expertise.
The way in which Unger negotiates the di⁄culties of this experience may be
instructive for those who often ¢nd themselves in a similar situation.
FROM INDETERMINACY TO EXPERIMENTALISM
Free Trade Re-im agi ne d is not a linear book, but rather one which builds its argu-
ment iteratively, through the layered repetitio n of key concepts, and the accumu-
lation ofre£ections on some of theirimplications.It may be useful,then, if in this
¢rst section I set out what I see as the four core claims which together make up
Unger’s re imagining of f ree trade.
The starting point of Unger’s argument is a fundamentalclaim about the inde-
terminacy of the idea of the market:
The concept of a market economy is institutional ly indeterminate. That is to say, it
is capable of being realised in di¡erent legal and institutional directions, each with
dramatic consequences for every aspect of social li fe. .. (9)
In my view, it is easiest to understand this claim about the indeterminacy of mar-
kets as a response to certainprevalentways of thinking and talking aboutmarkets,
whichUnger views as misleading. It is common, for example, to speak of markets
as having certain inherent dynamics ^ as following exogenously given laws of
behaviour, which stay constant across place and time. For Unger to say that mar-
kets are indeterminate, then, is in part to say that the dynamics and outcomes of
markets are deeply shaped by the context in which they are embedded: the legal
regimes governing contractual and labourrelations, the size and nature of market
participants, the cultures of rationality which shape how economic actors are
expected to behave, and so on. In more familiar terms, markets are indeterminate
in the sense that they constituted by the institutional context in which they exist,
and are always and inevitably culturally and socially embedded.
In addition,it is typical to speak and act as if a commitment to marketsi n some
sense dictates a particular set of policy choices, or a particular way of arranging
state-society relations. To say that markets are indeterminate, then, is also a way
of resisting this false premise ^ to say instead that there is more than one way of
translating general‘market principles’ of economic freedom and free competition
into concrete polic y proposals. It is, according to Unger, impossible to der ive a
particularhistorical market form from theabstract idea ofa ‘market’without mak-
ing a series of crucial political choices ^ choices which have profound e¡ects on
the nature of the economic arrangements ultimately produced. And ¢nally, it is
common in discussions about markets to speak as if our choices about how to
organise our economy necessarily fall somewhere on a continuum de¢ning
greater or lesser freedom of markets from government intervention. But if mar-
kets are institutionally indeterminate, as Ungersuggests they are, then the choices
available to us arevastly greater than those falling onthis narrow continuum: they
also includethe possibility of in¢nite revision and rede¢nition of the institutional
AndrewT.F. Lang
1016 r2008 The Author. Journal Compilation r2008 The Modern Law ReviewLimited.
(2008) 71(6) 1015^1031
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