Which perspective best describes the relationship between ideas and foreign economic policy? Do great intellectuals and ideas influence policy?

  Which perspective best describes the relationship between ideas and foreign economic policy? Do great intellectuals and ideas influence policy? Or do those figures and proposals associated with policy shifts come to the fore because they fit the dictates of material interests and circumstances? Be sure to respond with reference to primarily one policy shift Governing International Political Economy   Term 201 7-1 8 In The German Ideology, Karl Marx famously argued, 'we do not set out from what men say, imagine, conceive, nor from men as narrated, thought of, imagined, conceived, in order to arrive at men in the flesh. We set out from real, active men, and on the basis of their real life-process we demonstrate the development of the ideological reflexes and echoes of this Iife-process.-.Morality, religion, metaphysics, all the rest of ideology and their corresponding forms of consciousness, thus no longer retain the semblance of independence-..[M}en, developing their material production and their material intercourse, alter, along with this their real existence, their thinking and the products of their thinking. Life is not determined by consciousness, but consciousness by Iife.‘ In response, JM Keynes closed The General Theory with, ‘the ideas of economists and political philosophers, both when they are right and when they are wrong, are more powerful than is commonly understood. Indeed the world is ruled by little else. Practical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influences, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist- Madmen in authority, who hear voices in the air, are distilling their frenzy from some academic scribbler of a few years back..[l]t is ideas, not vested interests, which are dangerous for good or evil.’Which perspective best describes the relationship between ideas and foreign economic policy? Do great intellectuals and ideas influence policy? Or do those figures and proposals associated with policy sh’rfts come to the fore because they fit the dictates of material interests and circumstances? Be sure to respond with reference to primarily one policy shift Be sure to respond with reference to primarily one policy shift. You may analyse this shift qualitatively as a case study-such as the influence of Lenin’s ideas on the Russian Revolution. Or you may analyse this shift quantitatively-such as the influence of income inequality on revolutions. But you should have only one dependent variable. Also be sure that your response does not cover the same shifts that you have analysed in your formative essay and presentation-