Public intellectuals and the financial crisis

A worthy winner: Simon Johnson, Professor at MIT, Peterson Institute fellow and former IMF chief economist

The financial crisis has destroyed both wealth and received wisdom. The idea that prices are always right and markets self-correct is fatally challenged. Even Alan Greenspan admits that the “whole intellectual edifice” of the efficient market hypothesis collapsed in the summer of 2008. The financial establishment is in a state of deep confusion. As the FT’s Gillian Tett put it in September’s Prospect: it is like “a priest who has lost faith in the Bible, but still has to go to church.” But this is not a bad thing, for it has opened up new ways of thinking about markets, institutions and the all-important cause of financial reform.

Unfamiliar voices have come to prominence, aided by a new wave of financial bloggers eager to push fresh ideas. But who has made the most impact? Prospect assembled a panel of experts to draw up a list of leading “public intellectuals” of the financial crisis in 2009 and then decide on the most important. Our criteria were simple. Anyone who had made an impact on policy with their ideas, or who had changed the “public conversation” was a candidate.

The panel sifted hundreds of names, with an unavoidable bias towards Britain and the US, but felt the most important contributions had been in financial reform—those trying to work out what to do next. The crisis has laid a staggering financial burden on the world, with some $14 trillion propping up US and EU banks. We cannot afford another one. Moreover, we urgently need a new regulatory philosophy. Are liquid markets always good? Is complexity in financial services harmful? Can finance firms stop “herding,” creating wild booms and busts?

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The world’s top intellectuals on our website

What do you think?

Prospect is perhaps best known internationally for our polls, in partnership with Foreign Policy, of the world’s top 100 intellectuals. The lists have continued to provoke debate ever since their publication, and are now easily accessible from one place on our website together with links to related articles. Given the constantly shifting nature of the intellectual arena, and of the issues facing the best minds at work in the world today, Prospect invites you to share your thoughts on the world’s most important thinkers in the comments section below. Who is overlooked or overrated, and why? What does it mean to be an intellectual today? What should our best minds be thinking about? Let us know.

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Public intellectuals poll

There was a noisy response to Prospect’s list of Britain’s top 100 public intellectuals. Two issues attracted the most attention. First, how few women were on Prospect’s original list (12 out of 100). The Guardian women’s page ran its own alternative list of “101 overlooked women intellectuals” and then added another 42 based on readers’ responses. Both lists, however, confused celebrities or well known media personalities with public intellectuals.

The Guardian failed to address the central issue with any rigour: are there fewer women intellectuals than men? If so, why? Why are women public intellectuals, even taking the Guardian list as a basis, concentrated in so few areas: 30 per cent are writers or critics and 12 per cent journalists or broadcasters? By contrast, there is one scientist, two economists and three women in medicine.

The second issue that came up was the centralisation of British intellectual culture. Newspapers, magazines, publishers and television are overwhelmingly concentrated in the southeast. It is also the home of many of our great teaching hospitals and top universities. The Manchester of Lewis Namier, the young AJP Taylor and Michael Polanyi is no more. Many of Scotland’s top intellectuals are in London.

What do the votes of Prospect readers show? First, there are few surprises. Of the top 30 names the only surprise is Amartya Sen (voted third), a major international figure in his field, but who would have thought that development economics would attract such a popular following without either a significant media presence or a bestselling book? Elsewhere, the names are familiar enough from television or radio: Dawkins and Greer, Miller and Bragg, Ignatieff and Frayn. Historians are prominent: Hobsbawm, Schama and Niall Ferguson are all in the top ten. Political essayists, too: Ignatieff and Garton Ash, Monbiot, Hitchens, Hutton and AC Grayling are all in the top 20.

The dog that didn’t bark is science. Richard Dawkins came top, by a long way, but it’s a long fall to Susan Greenfield and Robert Winston (in the top 30, but only just). That’s it: three scientists in the top 30. The other poor showing is for politics, think tanks and law: Marquand and Le Grand, Mulgan and Grant, Pannick and David Green are all near the bottom. It seems we prefer historians and political essayists, the intellectual culture of BBC2, Radio 4 and higher journalism including, after 100 issues, Prospect.

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Top intellectuals – the results

Britain’s top 100 public intellectuals, as selected by Prospect’s readership—ranked in descending order of votes received. Each reader was allowed to nominate up to five intellectuals.

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