Economists and social change: Science, professional power, and politics in Hungary, 1945--1995

I argue that Hungarian economists advocated liberalizing market reforms as a means both to shape the economy according to their theoretical presuppositions and to strengthen their profession. Using the literature from the sociology of professions and the sociology of scientific knowledge, I analyze the history of Hungarian economics from the end of the Second World War to 1995 through Party-state archival documents, secondary sources, and interviews. During socialism, economists promoted market reforms and linked these reforms to professional claims for new institutions, autonomy, expert authority, and political influence. Economists' political connections allowed them to institutionalize their market economic ideas and become powerful actors in the transformation of the economy. While economists were powerful actors, the full realization of this transformation after 1989 paradoxically had the unintended consequence of destroying the very situation that allowed them to have a near monopoly over economic issues during socialism.