Economics Dictionary of ArgumentsHome
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| Political elections: Political elections are a process by which citizens choose people to represent them in government. Elections are typically held at regular intervals, and voters can choose from a variety of candidates. Elections are not conducted by the state, but by the people. See also Democracy, Electoral systems._____________Annotation: The above characterizations of concepts are neither definitions nor exhausting presentations of problems related to them. Instead, they are intended to give a short introduction to the contributions below. – Lexicon of Arguments. | |||
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Joseph A. Schumpeter on Political Elections - Dictionary of Arguments
Sobel I 29 Political elections/Schumpeter/Sobel/Clemens: (…) in the process of seeking election (or re-election) politicians must make promises to give benefits to narrow interest groups to earn their votes and political support (and campaign contributions). These groups "may consist of …exponents of an economic interest or of idealists of one kind or another or of People simply interested in staging and managing political shows ... Human nature in politics being what it is, they are able to fashion and within very wide limits" (CSD(1): 263) shape the outcomes of the political process. One such interest group is obviously those businesses being threatened by creative destruction Who seek to get government to restrict competition. In his book, Business Cycles (BC1)(2), Schumpeter states: „Such struggles for a share in profits that have been made are, however, less important for our subject than the struggles to conserve the stream of profit itself... Taking industry as a whole, there is always an innovating sphere warring with an "old" sphere, which sometimes tries to secure prohibition of the new ways of doing things.“ (BC1(2): 106-108) Sobel/Coemens: Schumpeter's arguments regarding the high level ofinfluence that special-interest groups have in the political process and how this influence would grow through time within a democracy was an insight that would not be widely recognized in the academic literature until much later.* One reason special-interest groups are able to achieve the upper hand in the political process is the widespread ignorance of voters regarding political issues, which Schumpeter recognized explicitly as one source of the failures of the democratic process: The reduced sense of responsibility and the absence of effective volition in turn explain the ordinary citizen's ignorance and lack of judgement in matters of domestic and foreign policy which are if anything more shocking in the case of educated People and ofpeople who are successfully active in non-political walks of life than it is with the uneducated people in humble situations. Information is plentiful and readily available. But this does not seem to make any difference ... the typical citizen drops down to a Iower level of mental performance as soon as he enters the political field. He argues and analyzes in a way which he would readily recognize as infantile within the sphere of his real interests. He becomes primitive again.“ (CSD(1): 261-262) >Information, >Democracy/Schumpeter, >Government policy/Schumpeter. Sobel I 30 When a large proportion of voters are not motivated to be informed and participate, this then gives well-organized subsets of voters and special-interest groups an upper hand in the political process to achieve their narrow ends at the expense of the general public.** Because of these limitations and failures of the democratic decision-making process, Schumpeter believed that there should be constraints on the scope of government action: „The second condition for the success of democracy is that the effective range of political decision should not be extended too far ... in order to function properly that all-powerful parliament must impose limits upon itself... a corresponding limitation of the activities of the state.“ (CSD)(1): 291-292) * This idea is most widely associated with the work of Mancur Olsen in his book, The Rise and Decline of Nations (1982)(3). ** Modern public-choice theory also suggests that the political process tends to be biased toward producing short-sighted outcomes that favour creating highly visible current benefits to interest groups, especially when the costs are far into the future and hard to discern, while being biased against undertaking actions that create future benefits but that require current visible costs. More simply put, relative to markets, governments tend to place more weight on the aspects that are highly visible in the short term, rather than the long term. Schumpeter clearly agreed as democracy "forces upon the men at or near the helm a short-run view and it makes it extremely diffcult for them to serve such long-run interests of the nation as may require consistent work for far-off ends" (CSD(1): 287). 1. Schumpeter, Joseph A. (1942). Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy [CSD]. Harper & Brothers. 2. Schumpeter, Joseph A. (1939). Business Cycles: A Theoretical, Historical, and Statistical Analysis of the Capitalist Process, Volume 1 [BC1]. McGraw-Hill Book Company. 3. Olsen, Mancur (1982). The Rise and Decline of Nations. Yale University Press._____________Explanation of symbols: Roman numerals indicate the source, arabic numerals indicate the page number. The corresponding books are indicated on the right hand side. ((s)…): Comment by the sender of the contribution. Translations: Dictionary of Arguments The note [Concept/Author], [Author1]Vs[Author2] or [Author]Vs[term] resp. "problem:"/"solution:", "old:"/"new:" and "thesis:" is an addition from the Dictionary of Arguments. If a German edition is specified, the page numbers refer to this edition. |
EconSchum I Joseph A. Schumpeter The Theory of Economic Development An Inquiry into Profits, Capital, Credit, Interest, and the Business Cycle, Cambridge/MA 1934 German Edition: Theorie der wirtschaftlichen Entwicklung Leipzig 1912 Sobel I Russell S. Sobel Jason Clemens The Essential Joseph Schumpeter Vancouver 2020 |
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