Political Power and Economic Policy

Political Power and Economic Policy PDF Author: Gordon C. Rausser
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781139123006
Category : Economic policy
Languages : en
Pages : 519

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Book Description
"This book analyzes the links between political economics, governance structures and the distribution of political power in economic policy making. The book theoretically explains and empirically quantifies these interactions. The analysis includes both public good policies and redistributive policies. Part I of the book presents the conceptual foundations of political-economic bargaining and interest group analysis. After presenting the underlying theory, Part II of the book examines ideology, prescription and political power coefficients; Part III analyzes a number of specific structures; and Part IV presents a framework for political econometrics with a number of empirical applications and testable hypotheses. In all four parts of the book, four analytical dimensions of public policy are distinguished: governance structures, political economy, mechanism design and incidence"--Provided by publisher.

Political Power and Economic Policy

Political Power and Economic Policy PDF Author: Gordon C. Rausser
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781139123006
Category : Economic policy
Languages : en
Pages : 519

Get Book

Book Description
"This book analyzes the links between political economics, governance structures and the distribution of political power in economic policy making. The book theoretically explains and empirically quantifies these interactions. The analysis includes both public good policies and redistributive policies. Part I of the book presents the conceptual foundations of political-economic bargaining and interest group analysis. After presenting the underlying theory, Part II of the book examines ideology, prescription and political power coefficients; Part III analyzes a number of specific structures; and Part IV presents a framework for political econometrics with a number of empirical applications and testable hypotheses. In all four parts of the book, four analytical dimensions of public policy are distinguished: governance structures, political economy, mechanism design and incidence"--Provided by publisher.

Political Power and Economic Policy

Political Power and Economic Policy PDF Author: Gordon C. Rausser
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 113949984X
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 498

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Book Description
This book analyzes the links between political economics, governance structures and the distribution of political power in economic policy making. The book theoretically explains and empirically quantifies these interactions. The analysis includes both public good policies and redistributive policies. Part I of the book presents the conceptual foundations of political-economic bargaining and interest group analysis. After presenting the underlying theory, Part II of the book examines ideology, prescription and political power coefficients; Part III analyzes a number of specific structures; and Part IV presents a framework for political econometrics with a number of empirical applications and testable hypotheses. In all four parts of the book, four analytical dimensions of public policy are distinguished: governance structures, political economy, mechanism design and incidence.

Political Capitalism

Political Capitalism PDF Author: Randall G. Holcombe
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108596126
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 305

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Book Description
Problems associated with cronyism, corporatism, and policies that favor the elite over the masses have received increasing attention in recent years. Political Capitalism explains that what people often view as the result of corruption and unethical behavior are symptoms of a distinct system of political economy. The symptoms of political capitalism are often viewed as the result of government intervention in a market economy, or as attributes of a capitalist economy itself. Randall G. Holcombe combines well-established theories in economics and the social sciences to show that political capitalism is not a mixed economy, or government intervention in a market economy, or some intermediate step between capitalism and socialism. After developing the economic theory of political capitalism, Holcombe goes on to explain how changes in political ideology have facilitated the growth of political capitalism, and what can be done to redirect public policy back toward the public interest.

Affluence and Influence

Affluence and Influence PDF Author: Martin Gilens
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691153973
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 348

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Book Description
Why policymaking in the United States privileges the rich over the poor Can a country be a democracy if its government only responds to the preferences of the rich? In an ideal democracy, all citizens should have equal influence on government policy—but as this book demonstrates, America's policymakers respond almost exclusively to the preferences of the economically advantaged. Affluence and Influence definitively explores how political inequality in the United States has evolved over the last several decades and how this growing disparity has been shaped by interest groups, parties, and elections. With sharp analysis and an impressive range of data, Martin Gilens looks at thousands of proposed policy changes, and the degree of support for each among poor, middle-class, and affluent Americans. His findings are staggering: when preferences of low- or middle-income Americans diverge from those of the affluent, there is virtually no relationship between policy outcomes and the desires of less advantaged groups. In contrast, affluent Americans' preferences exhibit a substantial relationship with policy outcomes whether their preferences are shared by lower-income groups or not. Gilens shows that representational inequality is spread widely across different policy domains and time periods. Yet Gilens also shows that under specific circumstances the preferences of the middle class and, to a lesser extent, the poor, do seem to matter. In particular, impending elections—especially presidential elections—and an even partisan division in Congress mitigate representational inequality and boost responsiveness to the preferences of the broader public. At a time when economic and political inequality in the United States only continues to rise, Affluence and Influence raises important questions about whether American democracy is truly responding to the needs of all its citizens.

The American Political Economy

The American Political Economy PDF Author: Jacob S. Hacker
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1316516369
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 487

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Book Description
Drawing together leading scholars, the book provides a revealing new map of the US political economy in cross-national perspective.

Power in Economic Thought

Power in Economic Thought PDF Author: Manuela Mosca
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 3319940392
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 393

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Book Description
This book offers a pluralistic vision of the way economists have dealt with the question of power in society over the last two centuries. Economists’ ideas about power are examined from political, theoretical and policy-making points of view, with additional discussion of the active participation of economists in the management of power. The book is organized into four main conceptions of power relations: i) Power as embedded in political institutions; ii) Power as emerging from the asymmetric relations caused by the unequal distribution of income and wealth; iii) Power as associated to the monopolistic or oligopolistic position held by some firms in the market; and iv) Power as the management of economic policies by the state. Mosca brings together contributions from a range of scholars to analyse how economists have considered the role of power, putting the discussion into a much needed historical context.

Political Power and Corporate Control

Political Power and Corporate Control PDF Author: Peter A. Gourevitch
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 1400837014
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 365

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Book Description
Why does corporate governance--front page news with the collapse of Enron, WorldCom, and Parmalat--vary so dramatically around the world? This book explains how politics shapes corporate governance--how managers, shareholders, and workers jockey for advantage in setting the rules by which companies are run, and for whom they are run. It combines a clear theoretical model on this political interaction, with statistical evidence from thirty-nine countries of Europe, Asia, Africa, and North and South America and detailed narratives of country cases. This book differs sharply from most treatments by explaining differences in minority shareholder protections and ownership concentration among countries in terms of the interaction of economic preferences and political institutions. It explores in particular the crucial role of pension plans and financial intermediaries in shaping political preferences for different rules of corporate governance. The countries examined sort into two distinct groups: diffuse shareholding by external investors who pick a board that monitors the managers, and concentrated blockholding by insiders who monitor managers directly. Examining the political coalitions that form among or across management, owners, and workers, the authors find that certain coalitions encourage policies that promote diffuse shareholding, while other coalitions yield blockholding-oriented policies. Political institutions influence the probability of one coalition defeating another.

Hijacking the Agenda

Hijacking the Agenda PDF Author: Christopher Witko
Publisher: Russell Sage Foundation
ISBN: 1610449053
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 384

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Book Description
Why are the economic interests and priorities of lower- and middle-class Americans so often ignored by the U.S. Congress, while the economic interests of the wealthiest are prioritized, often resulting in policies favorable to their interests? In Hijacking the Agenda, political scientists Christopher Witko, Jana Morgan, Nathan J. Kelly, and Peter K. Enns examine why Congress privileges the concerns of businesses and the wealthy over those of average Americans. They go beyond demonstrating that such economic bias exists to illuminate precisely how and why economic policy is so often skewed in favor of the rich. The authors analyze over 20 years of floor speeches by several hundred members of Congress to examine the influence of campaign contributions on how the national economic agenda is set in Congress. They find that legislators who received more money from business and professional associations were more likely to discuss the deficit and other upper-class priorities, while those who received more money from unions were more likely to discuss issues important to lower- and middle-class constituents, such as economic inequality and wages. This attention imbalance matters because issues discussed in Congress receive more direct legislative action, such as bill introductions and committee hearings. While unions use campaign contributions to push back against wealthy interests, spending by the wealthy dwarfs that of unions. The authors use case studies analyzing financial regulation and the minimum wage to demonstrate how the financial influence of the wealthy enables them to advance their economic agenda. In each case, the authors examine the balance of structural power, or the power that comes from a person or company’s position in the economy, and kinetic power, the power that comes from the ability to mobilize organizational and financial resources in the policy process. The authors show how big business uses its structural power and resources to effect policy change in Congress, as when the financial industry sought deregulation in the late 1990s, resulting in the passage of a bill eviscerating New Deal financial regulations. Likewise, when business interests want to preserve the policy status quo, it uses its power to keep issues off of the agenda, as when inflation eats into the minimum wage and its declining purchasing power leaves low-wage workers in poverty. Although groups representing lower- and middle-class interests, particularly unions, can use their resources to shape policy responses if conditions are right, they lack structural power and suffer significant resource disadvantages. As a result, wealthy interests have the upper hand in shaping the policy process, simply due to their pivotal position in the economy and the resulting perception that policies beneficial to business are beneficial for everyone. Hijacking the Agenda is an illuminating account of the way economic power operates through the congressional agenda and policy process to privilege the interests of the wealthy and marks a major step forward in our understanding of the politics of inequality.

Political Capitalism

Political Capitalism PDF Author: Randall G. Holcombe
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108471773
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 305

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Book Description
Explains why government policies favor elites over the masses, building on well-established theories from the social sciences.

Private Wealth and Public Revenue

Private Wealth and Public Revenue PDF Author: Tasha Fairfield
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107088372
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 365

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Book Description
This book identifies sources of power that help business and economic elites influence policy decisions.