On means and ends in structural economic analysis: broadening the field of enquiry

Structural economic analysis (SEA) can be characterized as addressing means-ends problems at the systemic level. The paper argues that SEA can provide the theoretical tools for a broader field of enquiry, where the production system shapes the constraints and opportunities not only of a ‘systemic actor’ who pursues objectives on behalf of the entire system, but also of a variety of potential political-economic actors who pursue their own objectives. Doing so requires three analytical steps. First, instead of assuming the relevant actors at the outset, each model in SEA can be taken as suggesting different social aggregations that might count as actors. Second, productive structure can be interpreted, from the viewpoint of different actors, as imposing different constraints on, and offering different opportunities to, those actors. Third, we need to study which aggregations will count as the relevant actors in the situation under analysis.