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Small Steps Forward for Political Economy

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 February 2017

Joe A. Oppenheimer
Joe A. Oppenheimer
Affiliation:
Associate Professor of Government at the University of Maryland
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Abstract

Only small gains can be made in the study of political economy without building upon the traditions of Marx and rationality models. Deep are the historical observations and theoretical linkages that these schools have given us. Rationality models give us a feeling for the coalitional and strategic elements in political calculations. They inform us as to the behavioral constraints that will operate on political actors. Marxian tradition sensitizes us to the institutional constraints which markets and private property give to the political process. It is therefore unfortunate that two recent books regarding political economy-Tufte's Political Control of the Economy and Lindblom's Politics and Markets-avoid both of these traditions. Their contribution to our understanding of political economy suffers because of this omission.

Type
Review Articles
Information
World Politics , Volume 33 , Issue 1 , October 1980 , pp. 121 - 151
Copyright
Copyright © Trustees of Princeton University 1980

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References

1 Olson, Mancur, “Economics, Sociology, and the Best of All Possible Worlds, The Public Interest, XII (Summer 1968), 96–118.Google Scholar

2 Hirsch, Fred and Goldthorpe, John H., “Prologue,” in Hirsch, and Goldthorpe, , eds., The Political Economy of Inflation (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1978), 1–11.Google Scholar

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5 For a summary of the relevant findings see Plott, Charles R., “The Application of Laboratory Experimental Schools to Public Choice,” Social Science Working Paper No. 223 (Pasadena: California Institute of Technology, July 1978).Google Scholar The original paper, parts of which were published, is the best source for the details of the findings. See Plott, Charles R. and Levine, Michael E., “A Model of Agenda Influence on Committee Decisions,” Social Science Working Paper No. 143 (Pasadena, California Institute of Technology, November 1976).Google Scholar

6 The results here are astoundingly strong. See Plott (fn. 4), for a partial interpretation. Also see McKelvey, Richard D., “Intransitivities in Multidimensional Voting Models and Some Implications for Agenda Control,” Journal of Economic Theory, XII (June 1976), 472–82CrossRefGoogle Scholar, which shows that if there are cycles anywhere in the issue space, the majority-rule outcome can be anywhere within that space. For the conditions under which cycles must be expected, see Kramer, Gerald H., “On a Class of Equilibrium Conditions for Majority Rule,” Econometrica, XLI (March 1973), 285–97CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Plott, Charles R., “A Notion of Equilibrium and Its Possibility under Majority Rule,” American Economic Review, LVII (September 1967), 787–806.Google Scholar

7 Frohlich, Norman and Oppenheimer, Joe A., Modern Political Economy (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1978)Google Scholar, Part II. Also see Oppenheimer, , “Some Political Implications of ‘Vote Trading and the Voting Paradox: A Proof of Logical Equivalence’: A Comment,” American Political Science Review, Vol. 69 (September 1975), 963–66.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

8 Shepsle, Kenneth A., “Institutional Structure and Policy Choice: Some Comparative Statistics of Amendment Control Procedures,” mimeo (St. Louis: Washington University, 1978).Google Scholar

9 A strong argument is made by Plott (fn. 4).

10 Braybrooke, David and Lindblom, Charles E., A Strategy of Decision (New York: Free Press, 1963).Google Scholar

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13 See Olson, Mancur, The Logic of Collective Action (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1965)Google Scholar; Frohlich and Oppenheimer (fn. 7), chaps. 2 and 3.

14 See fns. 2, 4, 5, 6, 7, and 8.

15 Hardin, Russell, “Collective Action as an Agreeable n−Prisoners' Dilemma,” Behavioral Science, XVI (September 1971), 472–81CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Orbell, John M. and Wilson, L. A. II, “Institutional Solutions to the N-Prisoners' Dilemma,” American Political Science Review, Vol. 72 (June 1978), 411–21.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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17 Downs, Anthony, An Economic Theory of Democracy (New York: Harper, 1957)Google Scholar, first showed the relationship between rational ignorance and collective action; Olson (fn. 13); see Frohlich (fn. 16) for the argument.

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19 This, as we shall see, is also the message underscored by Tufte.

20 For example, Tufte shows that government's response need not be an increase of subsidies or status to business.

21 For examples, see Alexander, Herbert E., Financing Politics (Washington, D.C.: Congressional Quarterly, 1976)Google Scholar, and Heard, Alexander, The Costs of Democracy (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1960).Google Scholar

22 Hobson, John A., Imperialism (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan, 1965)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Lenin, V. I., Imperialism, The Highest Stage of Capitalism (New York: International Publishers, 1939).Google Scholar

23 Indeed, Lindblom points out that “there is a long-established and documented Marxian argument [to substantiate the control of the democratic state by the business interests]. Yet circumstantial evidence is weaker than direct evidence, and the Marxian argument is insufficiently persuasive” (p. 168). And with this, the Marxian arguments are dismissed.

24 Downs (fn. 17), 254.

25 Bernholz, Peter, “Logrolling, Arrow Paradox and Decision Rules—A Generalization,” Kyklos, XIX (fasc. 1, 1966), 49–61.Google Scholar Also see Frohlich and Oppenheimer (fn. 7), chap. 6.

26 Oppenheimer, , “Outcomes of Logrolling in the Bargaining Set and Democratic Theory: Some Conjectures,” Public Choice, XXXIV (Nos. 3/4, 1979), 419–34Google Scholar; Bernholz, Peter, “On the Stability of Logrolling Outcomes in Stochastic Games,” Public Choice, XXXIII (No. 3, 1978), 65–83.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

27 Olson (fn. 13).

28 Ibid.

29 Olson, Mancur and Zeckhauser, Richard, “An Economic Theory of Alliances,” Review of Economics and Statistics, XLVIII (August 1966), 266–79.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

30 McPherson, C. B., Democratic Theory (New York: Oxford Book Co., 1973).Google Scholar

31 These figures are not unrepresentative of the changes that occurred in the distribution of money income in the United States between 1964 and 1976.

32 Miller, S. M. and Rein, Martin, “Can Income Redistribution Work?” Social Policy, VI (May/June 1975), 3–18.Google Scholar

33 Piven, Francis F. and Cloward, Richard, Poor People's Movements (New York: Pantheon, 1977).Google Scholar

34 In a less sophisticated work, Frank Parkin cast some doubt on the hypothesized relationship between the ideology of the governing parties and the degree of redistribution. Tufte's comments, brief as they are, should serve as an interesting stimulus and challenge to the readers of Parkin's, book, Class Inequality and Political Order (New York: Praeger, 1971).Google Scholar

35 See, for instance, Roberti, P., “Income Distribution: A Time Series and Cross Section Study,” Economic Journal, Vol. 84 (September 1974), 629–38.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

36 Oppenheimer, , “The Democratic Politics of Distributive Justice: Theory and Practice,” mimeo (College Park: University of Maryland, 1979).Google Scholar

37 Piven and Cloward (fn. 33).

38 See, for instance, Ward, Benjamin, “Majority Rule and Allocation,” Journal of Conflict Resolution, V (December 1961), 380–89.Google Scholar

39 Shepsle (fn. 8).

40 Piven and Cloward (fn. 33), 21–23.

41 Ibid., 15–18.

42 Margaret Levi argues along a similar line in “On the Marxist Theory of the State,” mimeo (Seattle: University of Washington, 1979). Recently, Adam Przeworski and Michael Wallerstein have taken some steps to combine these lines of inquiry. See their “The Structure of Class Conflict in Advanced Capitalist Societies,” mimeo (University of Chicago, 1980).

43 Tufte discusses it only for the sake of dismissal. Referring to the spatial hypotheses in Downs (fn. 17), Tufte asserts, “the evidence does not support the key deduction from the Downsian party model.” Given the grave difficulties of the spatial parts of Downs's model, it is a bit antediluvian to characterize them as “key.”

44 Lindblom, however, leads one to have different expectations. Even though Karl Marx is cited as one of “the two heroes of this book” (p. 7), the reader waits in vain to discover the input of Marxian philosophy. Perhaps his role was only inspirational.

45 Interestingly, both scholars adopt perspectives that are implicitly related to those of the public-choice theorists. Tufte's conception of politicians is obviously derived from the concerns of the entrepreneurial political model of Downs. Lindblom, too, as pointed out above, has a long history of indirect involvement with the public-choice literature.