IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/uca/ucapdv/9.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

A model of political enterprise

Author

Listed:
  • Ferrero, Mario

Abstract

Political organizations engaged in long-term operations are viewed as firms that sell promises: their output is the expectation of a reorganization of society. Because benefits will accrue to the organization's customers and rewards will be paid out to its workers only if and when the goal is achieved, the workers are volunteers in the sense that they engage in unpaid effort today in exchange for a probabilistic reward tomorrow. Because a market for promises is the ideal ground for reciprocal cheating, some mechanisms to ensure reciprocal trust must be devised if exchange is to take place at all. Three problems of reciprocal trust are discussed: the firm's credibility vis-a' -vis its workers, workers' shirking, and the firm's credibility vis-a' -vis its customers. It is shown that a viable solution to these problems in effect turns the political firm into a kind of producer cooperative. It is then shown that the intrinsic inefficiency of a market made up of producer cooperatives makes merger likely, until a single firm remains. Then it is argued that these trust problems are further lessened if the firm undertakes commercial production on the side, with important consequences for its behavior: this is analyzed with a formal model of a two-product cooperative. These features of the political enterprise and industry are finally shown to account for a variety of observed facts of political life.

Suggested Citation

  • Ferrero, Mario, 1999. "A model of political enterprise," POLIS Working Papers 9, Institute of Public Policy and Public Choice - POLIS.
  • Handle: RePEc:uca:ucapdv:9
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Stcbjb7srHOi_2EvMvpTBupKIlCca0lH/view?usp=sharing
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Ben-ner, Avner, 1984. "On the stability of the cooperative type of organization," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 8(3), pages 247-260, September.
    2. Mario Ferrero & Giorgio Brosio, 1997. "Nomenklatura Rule Under Democracy," Journal of Theoretical Politics, , vol. 9(4), pages 445-475, October.
    3. Carmichael, H Lorne, 1989. "Self-Enforcing Contracts, Shirking, and Life Cycle Incentives," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 3(4), pages 65-83, Fall.
    4. Shapiro, Carl & Stiglitz, Joseph E, 1984. "Equilibrium Unemployment as a Worker Discipline Device," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 74(3), pages 433-444, June.
    5. Menchik, Paul L. & Weisbrod, Burton A., 1987. "Volunteer labor supply," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 32(2), pages 159-183, March.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    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. Mario Ferrero, 2020. "A theory of revolutionary organizations," Economics of Governance, Springer, vol. 21(3), pages 245-273, September.
    2. Michael Vlassopoulos, 2017. "‘Putting a Foot in the Door’: Volunteer Hiring and Organizational Form," Manchester School, University of Manchester, vol. 85(2), pages 133-162, March.
    3. Matthias Lang, 2023. "Stochastic contracts and subjective evaluations," RAND Journal of Economics, RAND Corporation, vol. 54(1), pages 104-134, March.
    4. repec:eee:labchp:v:3:y:1999:i:pb:p:2373-2437 is not listed on IDEAS
    5. Carstensen, Vivian, 1999. "Beschäftigungssicherung durch Arbeitszeitflexibilisierung," Hannover Economic Papers (HEP) dp-228, Leibniz Universität Hannover, Wirtschaftswissenschaftliche Fakultät.
    6. Cugno, Franco & Ferrero, Mario, 2004. "Competition among volunteers," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 20(3), pages 637-654, September.
    7. Paul S. Carlin, 2001. "Evidence on the Volunteer Labor Supply of Married Women," Southern Economic Journal, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 67(4), pages 801-824, April.
    8. Pierre Cahuc & André Zylberberg, 1994. "Que reste-t-il de la théorie du salaire d'efficience ?," Revue Économique, Programme National Persée, vol. 45(3), pages 385-398.
    9. Lewis A. Kornhauser & W. Bentley MacLeod, 2012. "Contracts between Legal Persons [The Handbook of Organizational Economics]," Introductory Chapters,, Princeton University Press.
    10. John G. Sessions & Nikolaos Theodoropoulos, 2014. "Tenure, Wage Profiles and Monitoring," Research in Labor Economics, in: New Analyses of Worker Well-Being, volume 38, pages 105-162, Emerald Group Publishing Limited.
    11. Roland A. Amann & Tobias J. Klein, 2012. "Returns to type or tenure?," Journal of the Royal Statistical Society Series A, Royal Statistical Society, vol. 175(1), pages 153-166, January.
    12. Carmichael, H Lorne & MacLeod, W Bentley, 1997. "Gift Giving and the Evolution of Cooperation," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 38(3), pages 485-509, August.
    13. Daniel Parent, 2001. "Incentive Pay in the United States: Its Determinants and Its Effects," CIRANO Working Papers 2001s-04, CIRANO.
    14. Ourania Karakosta & Nikos Tsakiris, 2009. "Indirect Tax Reforms and Public Goods under Imperfect Competition," University of Cyprus Working Papers in Economics 5-2009, University of Cyprus Department of Economics.
    15. André Zylberberg, 1994. "Effort et contrats : quelques enseignements concernant le marché du travail," Économie et Prévision, Programme National Persée, vol. 113(2), pages 1-20.
    16. Fahn, Matthias & MacLeod, W. Bentley & Muehlheusser, Gerd, 2023. "Past and Future Developments in the Economics of Relational Contracts," IZA Discussion Papers 16427, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    17. Michele Mosca & Marco Musella & Francesco Pastore, 2007. "Relational Goods, Monitoring And Non‐Pecuniary Compensations In The Nonprofit Sector: The Case Of The Italian Social Services," Annals of Public and Cooperative Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 78(1), pages 57-86, March.
    18. Deininger, Klaus, 1995. "Collective agricultural production: A solution for transition economies?," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 23(8), pages 1317-1334, August.
    19. Alberto Bayo-Moriones, 2001. "Seniority-based pay: is it used as a motivation device?," Working Papers 0103, Departament Empresa, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, revised May 2001.
    20. Vincenzo Scoppa, 2003. "Contratti incompleti ed enforcement endogeno. Una rassegna della letteratura," Economia politica, Società editrice il Mulino, issue 3, pages 391-440.
    21. Black, Dan A. & Loewenstein, Mark A., 1997. "Dismissals and match-specific rents," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 4(4), pages 325-340, December.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • D72 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - Political Processes: Rent-seeking, Lobbying, Elections, Legislatures, and Voting Behavior
    • L31 - Industrial Organization - - Nonprofit Organizations and Public Enterprise - - - Nonprofit Institutions; NGOs; Social Entrepreneurship

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:uca:ucapdv:9. 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: Lucia Padovani (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.digspes.uniupo.it .

    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.