Record Details

Are political support-driven policies always bad? The case of large interest groups

European Journal of Government and Economics

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Field Value
 
Title Are political support-driven policies always bad? The case of large interest groups
 
Creator Lagadec, Gael
 
Subject interest groups; lobbies; collective action; social welfare
D71; D72
 
Description The action of active interest groups (lobbies) has been traditionally considered to be a source of harmful waste for the economy which reduces social well-being. Can this analysis be adapted to the case of large unorganised groups which do not ask for anything directly? Or, on the contrary, does the setting up of policies which improve the situation of these large groups permit an improvement in social welfare? We start from classical (public choice) analyses of lobbying and rent-seeking developed since the 1970s, closely linked with the hypothesis of re-election-seeking politicians, before extending our analysis also to consider non-sector-specific policies and passive interest groups (notably those too large to meet the Olsonian condition of efficient collective action). Then the research question to be answered becomes whether promoting the interest of large groups can deliver social welfare as defined by the incumbent’s social welfare function. We refer to the political cycles’ evidence to consider that no social welfare objective can motivate the favouring of large groups.
 
Publisher Europa Grande
 
Contributor Fonds Pacifique of the French Overseas Ministry
 
Date 2014-12-30
 
Type info:eu-repo/semantics/article
info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion
Peer-reviewed Article
 
Format application/pdf
 
Identifier http://www.ejge.org/index.php/ejge/article/view/21
 
Source European Journal of Government and Economics; Vol 3, No 2 (2014); 138-147
2254-7088
 
Language eng
 
Relation http://www.ejge.org/index.php/ejge/article/view/21/46
 
Rights Copyright (c) 2014 Gael Lagadec
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0