IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/kap/copoec/v29y2018i3d10.1007_s10602-018-9256-3.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Political parties: insights from a tri-planar model of political economy

Author

Listed:
  • David J. Hebert

    (Aquinas College)

  • Richard E. Wagner

    (George Mason University)

Abstract

What is the place of political parties within a democratic system of political economy? Parties are often described as intermediaries that lubricate the political process by facilitating the matching of voter preferences with candidate positions. This line of analysis flows from a bi-planar model of the political process where politicians appeal directly to voters. In this paper, we examine how construction of a meso level of analysis that lies between micro and macro levels might influence the relationship between candidates and voters. This meso level interjects such organizations as political parties between candidates and voters, with those organizations comprising interest groups within a democratic process, as against serving simply as neutral intermediaries. In this case, political parties can exert substantive effects on democratic outcomes as they take on characteristics of interest groups, bringing to mind Michels (Political parties: a sociological study of the oligarchical tendencies of modern democracy, Hearst’s International Library, New York, 1915) analysis of the unavoidably oligopolistic nature of democratic political organization.

Suggested Citation

  • David J. Hebert & Richard E. Wagner, 2018. "Political parties: insights from a tri-planar model of political economy," Constitutional Political Economy, Springer, vol. 29(3), pages 253-267, September.
    • Handle: RePEc:kap:copoec:v:29:y:2018:i:3:d:10.1007_s10602-018-9256-3
    DOI: 10.1007/s10602-018-9256-3
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s10602-018-9256-3
    File Function: Abstract
    Download Restriction: Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1007/s10602-018-9256-3?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Denzau, Arthur T. & Munger, Michael C., 1986. "Legislators and Interest Groups: How Unorganized Interests Get Represented," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 80(1), pages 89-106, March.
    2. Leeson, Peter T., 2005. "Endogenizing fractionalization," Journal of Institutional Economics, Cambridge University Press, vol. 1(1), pages 75-98, June.
    3. Peter Leeson, 2008. "Coordination without command: Stretching the scope of spontaneous order," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 135(1), pages 67-78, April.
    4. Jurgen Backhaus, 1978. "Pareto on public choice," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 33(1), pages 5-17, March.
    5. Daniel Smith, 2014. "Heterogeneity and exchange: Safe-conducts in Medieval Spain," The Review of Austrian Economics, Springer;Society for the Development of Austrian Economics, vol. 27(2), pages 183-197, June.
    6. Potts, Jason & Morrison, Kate, 2007. "Meso comes to markets: Comment on `Markets come to bits'," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 63(2), pages 307-312, June.
    7. Stratmann, Thomas, 1992. "The Effects of Logrolling on Congressional Voting," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 82(5), pages 1162-1176, December.
    8. Jean Tirole, 1996. "A Theory of Collective Reputations (with applications to the persistence of corruption and to firm quality)," Review of Economic Studies, Oxford University Press, vol. 63(1), pages 1-22.
    9. Elvik, Rune, 1995. "Explaining the Distribution of State Funds for National Road Investments between Counties in Norway: Engineering Standards or Vote Trading?," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 85(3-4), pages 371-388, December.
    10. Thomas Stratmann & Martin Baur, 2002. "Plurality Rule, Proportional Representation, and the German Bundestag: How Incentives to Pork-Barrel Differ Across Electoral Systems," CESifo Working Paper Series 650, CESifo.
    11. Mueller, Dennis C & Stratmann, Thomas, 1994. "Informative and Persuasive Campaigning," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 81(1-2), pages 55-77, October.
    12. Michels, Robert, 1915. "Political Parties: A Sociological Study of the Oligarchical Tendencies of Modern Democracy," History of Economic Thought Books, McMaster University Archive for the History of Economic Thought, number michels1915.
    13. Stigler, George J & Becker, Gary S, 1977. "De Gustibus Non Est Disputandum," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 67(2), pages 76-90, March.
    14. Bernard Caillaud & Jean Tirole, 2002. "Parties as Political Intermediaries," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, Oxford University Press, vol. 117(4), pages 1453-1489.
    15. Peter T. Leeson, 2006. "Cooperation and Conflict," American Journal of Economics and Sociology, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 65(4), pages 891-907, October.
    16. Gary S. Becker, 1983. "A Theory of Competition Among Pressure Groups for Political Influence," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, Oxford University Press, vol. 98(3), pages 371-400.
    17. Wittman, Donald, 1989. "Why Democracies Produce Efficient Results," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 97(6), pages 1395-1424, December.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Deegen, Peter, 2019. "The political economy of biodiversity in representative democracy: Between the expressive and the instrumental domain," Forest Policy and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 107(C), pages 1-1.
    2. Jody W. Lipford, 2022. "The Distribution of Transfers and Taxes: Incentives and Implications for the US Deficit and Debt," Journal of Private Enterprise, The Association of Private Enterprise Education, vol. 37(Winter 20), pages 1-20.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. David J. Hebert & Richard E. Wagner, 2015. "Political Parties as Interest Groups," Levine's Bibliography 786969000000001246, UCLA Department of Economics.
    2. Richard E. Wagner, 2012. "Deficits, Debt, and Democracy," Books, Edward Elgar Publishing, number 14477.
    3. Persson, Torsten & Tabellini, Guido, 2002. "Political economics and public finance," Handbook of Public Economics, in: A. J. Auerbach & M. Feldstein (ed.), Handbook of Public Economics, edition 1, volume 3, chapter 24, pages 1549-1659, Elsevier.
    4. Kerekes, Carrie B. & Williamson, Claudia R., 2008. "Unveiling de Soto's mystery: property rights, capital formation, and development," Journal of Institutional Economics, Cambridge University Press, vol. 4(3), pages 299-325, December.
    5. Vahabi,Mehrdad, 2019. "The Political Economy of Predation," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9781107591370, October.
    6. Potters, Jan & Sloof, Randolph, 1996. "Interest groups: A survey of empirical models that try to assess their influence," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 12(3), pages 403-442, November.
    7. Ester Silva & José Silva Costa, 2006. "Are voters rationally ignorant? An empirical study of Portuguese local elections," Portuguese Economic Journal, Springer;Instituto Superior de Economia e Gestao, vol. 5(1), pages 31-44, May.
    8. Keith Jakee & Leonie Allen, 1998. "Destructive Competition or Competition Destroyed? Regulatory Theory and the History of Irish Road Transportation Legislation," European Journal of Law and Economics, Springer, vol. 5(1), pages 13-50, January.
    9. Bryan Caplan & Edward Stringham, 2005. "Mises, bastiat, public opinion, and public choice," Review of Political Economy, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 17(1), pages 79-105.
    10. Randall Holcombe, 2005. "Government growth in the twenty-first century," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 124(1), pages 95-114, July.
    11. Juan Carlos Berganza, 1998. "Relationships Between Politicians and Voters Through Elections: A Review Essay," Working Papers wp1998_9809, CEMFI.
    12. Sutirtha Bagchi & Libor Dušek, 2023. "Tax Withholding and the Size of Government," Villanova School of Business Department of Economics and Statistics Working Paper Series 59, Villanova School of Business Department of Economics and Statistics.
    13. Yogesh Uppal, 2011. "Does legislative turnover adversely affect state expenditure policy? Evidence from Indian state elections," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 147(1), pages 189-207, April.
    14. William J. Luther, 2021. "Behavioral and Policy Responses to COVID-19: Evidence from Google Mobility Data on State- Level Stay-at-Home Orders," Journal of Private Enterprise, The Association of Private Enterprise Education, vol. 36(Fall 2021), pages 67-89.
    15. Aidt, T.S. & Eterovic, D.S., 2007. "Give and Take: Political Competition, Participation and Public Finance in 20th Century Latin America," Cambridge Working Papers in Economics 0714, Faculty of Economics, University of Cambridge.
    16. Coyne, Christopher J. & Mathers, Rachel L., 2011. "Rituals: An economic interpretation," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 78(1), pages 74-84.
    17. Arye L. Hillman & Heinrich W. Ursprung, 2016. "Where are the rent seekers?," Constitutional Political Economy, Springer, vol. 27(2), pages 124-141, June.
    18. Casey B. Mulligan & Ricard Gil & Xavier Sala-i-Martin, 2004. "Do Democracies Have Different Public Policies than Nondemocracies?," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 18(1), pages 51-74, Winter.
    19. Fink, Alexander, 2012. "The effects of party campaign spending under proportional representation: Evidence from Germany," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 28(4), pages 574-592.
    20. Mehrdad Vahabi, 2011. "Appropriation, violent enforcement, and transaction costs: a critical survey," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 147(1), pages 227-253, April.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Political parties as interest groups; Common versus specialized knowledge; Agenda manipulation; Divided knowledge; Ideology; Democratic oligarchy;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D23 - Microeconomics - - Production and Organizations - - - Organizational Behavior; Transaction Costs; Property Rights
    • D72 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - Political Processes: Rent-seeking, Lobbying, Elections, Legislatures, and Voting Behavior
    • D83 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Search; Learning; Information and Knowledge; Communication; Belief; Unawareness
    • P16 - Political Economy and Comparative Economic Systems - - Capitalist Economies - - - Capitalist Institutions; Welfare State

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:kap:copoec:v:29:y:2018:i:3:d:10.1007_s10602-018-9256-3. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.