In recent years, sociologists have labored to understand how economists have gained influence over policymaking. We extend this research by shifting focus from the matter of influence to the matter of policy training. Granted that economists already have influence, how do future policy professionals learn economic rationales? How is this mindset transmitted to hesitant students? By asking these questions, we bring socialization back into institutional research on “new” professionals. Utilizing data from an ethnography of a Masters of Public Affairs program, we find that students learn economics through a process of “ambivalent reproduction”: they learn to “think like an economist without becoming one.” They remain skeptical and reject the notion that they are economists, and when they use economics in their future policy work they do so in limited ways. Nonetheless, ambivalent reproduction sustains the policy status-quo and allows economics to remain influential without true belief. Ambivalent reproduction provides a new means for understanding the loosely coupled influence of economics on policy, and it contributes to the sociology of economics, inhabited institutionalism, and professional socialization.

中文翻译：

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学会像经济学家一样思考而不成为经济学家：公共事务硕士课程中的矛盾再现和政策耦合

近年来，社会学家一直致力于了解经济学家如何获得对政策制定的影响力。我们通过将焦点从影响问题转移到政策培训问题来扩展这项研究。假设经济学家已经具有影响力，那么未来的政策专业人士如何学习经济原理呢？这种心态如何传递给犹豫不决的学生？通过提出这些问题，我们将社会化带回到对“新”专业人士的机构研究中。利用公共事务硕士项目的人种学数据，我们发现学生通过“矛盾再生产”的过程来学习经济学：他们学会“像经济学家一样思考，但又不成为经济学家”。他们仍然持怀疑态度，拒绝承认自己是经济学家，当他们在未来的政策工作中使用经济学时，他们的方式也很有限。尽管如此，矛盾的再生产维持了政策现状，并允许经济学在没有真正信仰的情况下保持影响力。矛盾再生产为理解经济学对政策的松散耦合影响提供了一种新的方法，它对经济学社会学、居住制度主义和职业社会化做出了贡献。