How Do Business Interest Groups Respond to Political Challenges? A Study of the Politics of German Employers

Social scientists dealing with business and politics have tended to focus mostly on the power of business and less on the political challenges and constraints that business interest groups face. This paper analyses how business interest groups respond to political initiatives that challenge their interests, using four episodes of political conflict in Germany. The paper elaborates a model of response strategies and their likely impact on political outcomes. The model suggests that business interest groups can respond to political challenges in two ways: by seeking confrontation or by pursuing adaptation. The paper illustrates these two response strategies with four episodes of political conflict in the political-economic history of Germany: (i) the adoption of social insurance under Bismarck, (ii) the adoption of unemployment insurance in the 1920s, (iii) the adoption of board-level codetermination in the early 1950s, (iv) and the Agenda 2010 labour market reforms of the early 2000s. These four case studies show that adaptation facilitates social compromise, while confrontation results in a bifurcated outcome, producing either dominance or defeat of business interests, depending on what side government takes. Furthermore, the analysis finds that confrontation tends to be associated with a unity of interests within the business community, while adaptation tends to be associated with a fragmentation of interests. The discussion emphasises that the role of business in politics should not be seen solely in terms of business ‘influencing’ politics, but also as potentially adaptive.     

试析德沃金对司法能动主义的批判——宪法解释视角

德沃金的法律解释学说是本世纪重要的法律学说,其宪法的道德解释是不同于司法能动主义支持者解释路径,通过对原意主义批判和宪法道德解释证成两个方面对司法能动主义进行批判。     

A Theory of Menu Federalism: Decentralization by Political Agreement

This paper analyzes agreements between governments that determine the division of policy-making power between central and regional governments. Our analysis demonstrates that initial circumstances and political risks affect the degree of centralization that will be adopted, and that asymmetric forms of federalism are often consequences of ongoing negotiations between regional and central governments over the assignment of policy-making authority. We analyze three settings where gains from constitutional exchange may exist: (i) the under-centralized state, (ii) the over-centralized state, and (iii) the constitutional convention. In each case, an asymmetric form of federalism is the predicted outcome, although the degree of asymmetry differs according to starting point. Modern and historical examples are used to illustrate the relevance of our analysis.     

Democracy Evolving: A Diversity of Institutional Contradictions Transforming Political Economy

I analyze democracy as an evolving socio-historical process of autonomy, participative governance, social learning, and institutionalization. I discuss a variety of institutional contradictions, ranging from protective versus developmental democracy, socialist versus capitalist democracy, transcendental versus comparative institutionalism, and utilitarian versus pragmatist democracy. I argue that these contradictions are inherent in the agonistic nature of democracy that is transforming political economy along with the antagonistic interests of its members and institutions. I also present a basic synthesis of some dynamic aspects of democracy that enable and enhance social emancipation and transformation.     

Towards a non-Darwinian Theory of Institutional Change

The paper emphasizes two flaws in mainstream economics: the failure to understand actual human behavior in many real contexts and the failure to take account of transaction costs. By emphasizing the role of knowledge, institutions, transaction costs and path dependence, new institutional economics has provided a powerful answer to these shortcomings. Nevertheless, a number of questions remain open. In particular, path dependence is far from being a continuous process. Its dynamics and its irregularities are by and large unexplained. Hence, a strong need for a convincing evolutionary theory of environmental change. This article does not deny the validity of the Darwinian view applied to the theory of the firm and of competition in a free-market economy. The paper, however, maintains that the natural-selection process that characterizes the Darwinian approach is ill suited to describe economic evolutionary processes. It is shown that a combination of functional analysis and natural selection may indeed be a better solution, for it solves some of the puzzles raised by public choice theory without violating the fundamental tenets of the new institutional economics approach. Still, although this combined view may well explain why the institutional features are retained by the system, it does not clarify why they are introduced in the first place. A third possibility is put forward in the second part of the paper, where a new evolutionary theory is suggested. Within this framework, agents are assumed to behave according to their preferences within the existing rules of the game. At the same time, new ideas and sometimes new ideologies may influence their behavioral patterns. The combination between needs and ideologies generates environmental change, especially if so-called ideological entrepreneurs are able to transform latent and shared beliefs into an institutional project and enforce it.     

资源诅咒传导机制的研究述评

资源诅咒是开发自然资源引起的一系列经济、社会问题的统称,比如经济增长缓慢、贸易保护、教育投资不足、物质资本积累下降、创新不足、不平等、寻租、腐败、体制不健全、内战等问题。因其明显的政策含义,资源诅咒传导机制成为研究的重点。本文以经济增长源泉为线索,区分经济学和政治学,从理论和实证两方面给出资源诅咒传导机制的全面说明,以帮助找出我国资源诅咒的关键因素,制定相应政策提高资源开发绩效。     

Government Spending and Taxation in Democracies and Autocracies

The paper develops a theoretical rationale for a non-linear relationship between the level of democracy and government spending. A model is presented showing why and how political participation influences the spending behavior of opportunistic governments that can choose an optimal combination of rents and public goods to attract political support. If the level of democracy remains low, governments rationally prefer rents as an instrument to assure political support. With increasing democratic participation, however, rents become an increasingly expensive (per unit of political support) instrument while the provision of public goods becomes more and more efficient in ensuring the incumbent government's survival in power. As a consequence, an increase in democracy, which drives a country from a pure autocracy to a semi-participatory system, tends to reduce government spending, while an increase in political participation from a semi-participatory country to a full democracy tends to raise the size of the public sector.     

论温室气体排放管制的政治学根据

温室气体排放管制的政治学根据包括绿色政治和政治合法性两个方面。在绿色政治的大背景下,国际政治和国内政治都将温室气体排放管制问题放到了一个非常重要的位置。政府对温室气体排放行为进行管制是实现和维护其政治合法性的重要途径。温室气体排放管制本身是政府作为公共权力主体应当提供的一种特殊公共产品。温室气体排放管制是政府履行其社会职能的重要方面。温室气体排放管制的目的是为社会提供环境公共产品——安全的气候。作为地球村的一员,每个国家应当积极采取相关法律政策措施促进温室气体减排。     

Good Judgment,Good Luck: Frank Fetter’s Neglected Theory of Entrepreneurship

Frank Fetter’s contributions to entrepreneurship and the theory of the firm are usually overlooked although his original treatments are relevant to both the history of economic thought and contemporary entrepreneurship research. This article highlights three ways in which Fetter’s work adds to our understanding of the entrepreneurial process. First, entrepreneurs direct their enterprises through the careful delegation of authority to managers, thereby maintaining residual control over the firm; similar views were pioneered by Frank Knight and the Austrian economists who continue to study cognate problems like judgmental decision making and proxy-entrepreneurship. Second, Fetter foreshadows Knight’s influential distinction between risk and uncertainty by arguing that entrepreneurs bear uncertainty through their investment decisions. However, Fetter extends Knight’s work by explicitly considering the role that chance and luck play in entrepreneurial success, a problem still debated in entrepreneurship studies. Third, Fetter argues that scarcity implies the active investment of resources, and thus the need for entrepreneurship. This view hints at current research on entrepreneurial bricolage as well as work emphasizing investment rather than opportunity as the defining concept of entrepreneurship. It also provides the microfoundations for strategic entrepreneurship research.     

The role of scanning in open intelligence systems

Every month, SRI Consulting Business Intelligence (SRIC-BI) professionals assemble more than 100 short abstracts of developments that they perceive to be signals of change, discontinuities, inflection points, outliers, or disruptive developments. The effort is part of a continuous scanning process and Scan program that allows SRIC-BI to gauge the ongoing turbulent confluence of culture, commerce, and technology that defines today's business environment. For more than 25 years, scanning has played an essential role in SRIC-BI's and SRI International's foresight capabilities by providing a systematic means for surveying the broad external environment for change vectors. Traditional monitoring processes in most organizations are largely arbitrary, depending on what concerned individuals or leaders in the organization are reading, thinking about, and sharing informally with each other. But in today's world, arbitrary is insufficient. No foresight function can operate with confidence without a disciplined process for spotting new patterns of change and bringing those issues into the organization for early consideration and action. This article describes the scanning process as SRIC-BI practices it, the importance of open intelligence systems, what benefits the scanning process can provide to organizations, and what problems organizations typically run into when setting up scanning systems.     

Formalism, logic and reality: a Keynesian analysis

It is the purpose of this paper to elaborate on the argumentthat formalism is non-neutral; analyses which today would bedescribed as informal turn into something quite different whenformalised. The reasons for non-neutrality refer to the choiceof assumptions or axioms, the choice of method, the type oflogic employed and closure. Focusing on the last three of these,the paper addresses the question of how to move from resultsobtained with formal methods under conditions of closure tothe reality one is attempting to model. We explore the needfor provisional closure to analyse open systems and for a rangeof methods to complement formal modelling in the attempt tounderstand the complex reality of an economic system.     

社会创业绩效评价中的平衡计分卡——系统动力学视角的分析

随着第三部门的发展及社会管理创新的不断深入,社会创业的研究与实践正在快速增长,特别是社会创业绩效评价工作逐渐受到关注.平衡计分卡作为研究与实践最频繁的工具,在应用的过程中也需要进行改进以适应社会创业的特点.首先构建了由学习与发展、内部流程、利益相关者及财务可持续性四个方面所组成的整体结构模型,然后利用平衡计分卡与系统动力学相结合的方法,分析了社会创业绩效评价工作体系指标间的复杂动态因果关系链,从系统动力反馈关系模型和特殊反馈关系的角度揭示了社会创业关键绩效指标间深层次的因果关系,明确了不同维度在实现绩效目标过程里的相互作用,并在此基础上给出了社会创业绩效评价工作应用平衡计分卡的对策与建议.     

Decentralized Governance,Constitution Formation,and Redistribution

What determines the relative strength of central and regional governments? Why do centers engage in more or less geographically based economic redistribution? And why do some centers redistribute from urban to rural areas while others do the opposite? This research answers these questions with reference to decentralized politics at key constitutional moments. Much contemporary research underscores the importance of the intergovernmental balance of power – be it in taxing authority or decision making autonomy – on economic outcomes. Many features of that balance are rooted in bargains struck at the time of constitution writing. Here, I suggest that the key ingredients in such bargains are the number of conflicting geographically salient factor endowments, the distribution of inter-regional inequality, and the degree of intra-state inequality within rural and urban regions. The greater the level of factoral conflict, the more elites who engage in constitutional negotiations are likely to constrain the central government by providing for substantial regional veto authority. Higher levels of inter-regional inequality heighten demands for inter-regional redistribution. Given some level of regional demand for central redistribution, whether its net effect is in favor of urban or rural regions will depend on the coalitional implications of inequality within regions. I examine the argument in light of the U.S., Argentine, and Indian processes of constitution formation.     

后发劣势:对后发国家发展战略的深层思考

随着国内外环境的改变和后发劣势的增加,曾经是后发国家最优战略选择的日、韩模式已失去了其存在的基础,盲目模仿反而会造成政府与市场的双重失灵;而作为当前最优制度选择的西方成熟的民主市场经济加宏观调控体制,则由于国情相异太大,后发国家难以模仿;在这种背景下,作为次优战略选择的民主宪政加自由市场模式就成为大部分后发国家当前的最佳选择.     

关于新政治经济学的思考

本文认为,建立社会主义新政治经济学的指导思想仍然应是马克思主义。其研究对象是生产关系及其经济运行;新政治经济学也应该讲政治。