IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/b/cup/cbooks/9781009693974.html

Politics as Exchange

Author

Listed:
  • Holcombe,Randall G.

Abstract

Political institutions have been depicted by academics as a marketplace where citizens transact with each other to accomplish collective ends difficult to accomplish otherwise. This depiction supports a romantic notion of democracy in which democratic governments are accountable to their citizens, and act in their best interests. In Politics as Exchange, Randall Holcombe explains why this view of democracy is too optimistic. He argues that while there is a political marketplace in which public policy is made, access to the political marketplace is limited to an elite few. A small group of well-connected individuals-legislators, lobbyists, agency heads, and others-negotiate to produce public policies with which the masses must comply. Examining the political transactions that determine policy, Holcombe discusses how political institutions, citizen mobility, and competition can limit the ability of elites to abuse their power.

Suggested Citation

  • Holcombe,Randall G., 2025. "Politics as Exchange," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9781009693974, August.
    • Handle: RePEc:cup:cbooks:9781009693974
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    To our knowledge, this item is not available for download. To find whether it is available, there are three options:
    1. Check below whether another version of this item is available online.
    2. Check on the provider's web page whether it is in fact available.
    3. Perform a
    for a similarly titled item that would be available.

    More about this item

    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:cup:cbooks:9781009693974. 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.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using 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: Data Services (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.cambridge.org .

    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.