The MA thesis of Andrea Dieck has been published in the publication series “IF-Schriftenreihe” by the Institut Futur, located at the Freie Universität Berlin. Her thesis is titled “Die Planung der Zukunft – Zum emanzipatorischen Potenzial demokratischer Wirtschaftsplanung als wünschenswerte Zukunftsplanung” (Planning the Future – On the emancipatory potential of democratic economic planning as a desirable form of future planning). You can find the abstract below:
“Economic planning is a constitutive feature of modern economies and shapes both market-based and planned economic systems. In the face of escalating global crises, however, experienced economic orders exhibit significant deficiencies in their institutional capacity to collectively shape a socially desirable long-term future. Within the context of the renewed debate on the democratization of the economy, democratic economic planning is increasingly discussed as an alternative to both market capitalism and state-socialist central planning. This thesis further investigates the extent to which a democratically planned economy may be understood not merely as an alternative economic model, but as a normatively superior and emancipatory form of collectively shaping the future. To this end, the thesis develops a theoretical framework that integrates approaches from comparative economic systems theory, critical political economy, Critical Theory and critical futures and transformation studies. On this basis, three ideal-typical planning contexts – private market economy, state-socialist central planning and democratic planning – are systematically compared with regard to their respective orientation towards the future through a morphological analytical framework. The findings demonstrate that democratic planning constitutes a qualitatively distinct relation to the future, in which normative questions of societal needs, ecological sustainability and democratic self-determination become integral components of economic decision-making processes.”