Keith Sutherland's blog

Just back from the annual political theory workshop at Manchester Met and astonished at the total lack of engagement with the current political crisis. I know that political theory is a branch of analytic philosophy but, given the subject matter, one might have expected some engagement with the real world of political economy, if only in the pub at the end of the day. However most of the conference participants (primarily political theory lecturers and graduate students) only seemed interested in furthering their own careers. In fact one of the organisers came to our publisher exhibit and commented how interesting our books looked, lamenting the fact that they did not fall within his own narrow research focus. The backdrop to our stand was a 6 x 3 ft poster emblazoned with the slogan "The Party's Over" but nobody seemed in the slightest bit concerned.

Just imagine how different it might have been if the financial meltdown and the MPs' expenses crisis had occurred during the intellectual ferment of 1968-9? The conference would have been deserted as the student body would have been picketing MPs. What a difference 40 years has made!

Keith Sutherland (Exeter, Imprint Academic): The most remarkable thing about the Chancellor’s Guardian interview wasn’t his unusual candour about the parlous state of the economy (“arguably the worst in 60 years”) but his admission that a year ago he had no idea of what was in store. In fairness to Mr. Darling – an intelligent and likeable man – he was in good company, for most economists and senior bankers hadn’t the faintest inkling of the financial crisis about to unfold: “No one did. No one had any idea”.

However it was pretty damn obvious to everybody else (other than practitioners of the ‘dismal science’) that the nation was gorging on an unsustainable debt and asset price bubble and that the whole pack of cards was about to fall down. Why is it that expert political judgment is so out of line with what has been called the ‘wisdom of crowds’?