Political Representation in Concentrated Industries: Revisiting the “Olsonian Hypothesis”

2003 ◽  
Vol 5 (3) ◽  
pp. 261-286 ◽  
Author(s):  
David M. Hart

This paper considers whether highly concentrated industries are better represented in the political process, as Olson's Logic of Collective Action suggests, and, if they are, whether this is so for the reasons that the Logic claims. It begins with a review and critique of the quantitative literature that has largely tried and failed to substantiate Olson's view. The bulk of the paper consists of five longitudinal case studies of firms that dominate or have dominated industries: IBM, Intel, Microsoft, America Online, and Cisco. The cases suggest that there is merit to the Olsonian view, but that alone it does not constitute an adequate political theory of the concentrated industry or the dominant firm. Additional variables drawn from organizational and institutional theory need to be incorporated into such a theory, including variables that bear on the allocation of attention, threat perception, and information flow within dominant firms.

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Renan Barbosa de Morais ◽  
Mário César San Felice ◽  
Pedro Henrique Del Bianco Hokama ◽  
Gabriel Ávila Casalecchi

Proportionality in political representation is an essential theme forrepresentative democracy. In Brazil, this debate appears in the contextof non-proportionality between a federative unit’s populationsize and its number of representatives in the Chamber of Deputies.In other words, the number of deputies in a state is not proportionalto its number of inhabitants, which violates the "one man, one vote"principle.Discussions around this disproportionality have motivated scholarsto develop empirical research that aims to identify the causesand consequences of the phenomenon and to analyze the impactthat the rule introduces in the political process. This article seeksto contribute to this debate by measuring the effective power ofeach Brazilian federation’s entity and proposing alternatives ofdistribution for the Brazilian Chamber of Deputies.To this end, we use a mathematical concept from game theory,called Power Index, which allows quantifying the existing representationaldiscrepancies. After evaluating several distributions, wesolved the Inverse Power Index Problem (IPIP) to obtain a distributionof chairs that reduces such disparities. To solve the IPIP, whichis computationally hard, we use an evolutionary heuristic. As anobjective function to minimize the discrepancy, we use the linearShapley rule, in which the power index of each state is proportionalto its population.


2018 ◽  
Vol 112 (3) ◽  
pp. 678-697 ◽  
Author(s):  
SACHA KAPOOR ◽  
ARVIND MAGESAN

We estimate the causal effect of independent candidates on voter turnout and election outcomes in India. To do this, we exploit exogenous changes in the entry deposit candidates pay for their participation in the political process, changes that disproportionately excluded candidates with no affiliation to established political parties. A one standard deviation increase in the number of independent candidates increases voter turnout by more than 6 percentage points, as some voters choose to vote rather than stay home. The vote share of independent candidates increases by more than 10 percentage points, as some existing voters switch who they vote for. Thus, independents allow winning candidates to win with less vote share, decrease the probability of electing a candidate from the governing coalition by about 31 percentage points, and ultimately increase the probability of electing an ethnic-party candidate. Altogether, the results imply that the price of participation by independents is constituency representation in government.


2012 ◽  
Vol 26 (1) ◽  
pp. 75-92 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maria Spirova ◽  
Boyka Stefanova

The political integration of ethnic minorities is one of the most challenging tasks facing the countries of post-communist Europe. The roads to their political representation in the mainstream political process are numerous and diverse. The EU accession of the Central and East European countries has expanded the scope of the political participation of minorities by adding an electoral process at the regional level: the elections for members of the European Parliament. This article presents a comparative study of the ways in which EU-level electoral processes affect the scope and quality of minority representation on the example of the participation of ethnic political parties in Bulgaria and Romania in the 2007 and 2009 electoral cycles of the European Parliament.


Author(s):  
Ardhana Ulfa Azis ◽  
Mia Siscawati

The implementation of affirmative quota policies by political structures, especially political parties as one of the elements of the political infrastructure, has provided the widest possible opportunity for women to be directly involved in the political process, such as becoming members of parliament to carry out over sight, budgeting, and legislative functions: the making and policymaking and political decisions. This research examines how women in the family path of the 2019’s election results, on the one hand, their faces are seen as political representatives of women in parliament, but on the other hand, they are also seen as representatives of the interests of party oligarchy in parliament. We explored the filling of affirmative quotas for female parliamentary candidates from the family line by political parties which allowed us to identify women parliamentarians from the family line as having two faces, namely as women's political representatives as well as party political representatives. In a stronger party oligarchy, we argue that filling the affirmative quota of female parliamentary candidates from the family line apart from being urged by the affirmative quota policy for 30%women's political representation, is also motivated by the interests of party oligarchy. We adopt the thoughts of Anne Phillips (1991) about the politics of presence which sees that women's representation in parliament starts from the number, not from the policies they produce.


2019 ◽  
pp. 67-88
Author(s):  
Stuart White

Contemporary democratic politics in many nations is characterized by a double anxiety concerning elite and “populist” capture of the political process. While the elitism concern points to the need to reassert popular sovereignty, the “populism” concern might be thought to contradict this. Drawing critically on Rousseau’s political theory, Stuart White develops and defends a normative conception of popular sovereignty that emphasizes the properly active and deliberative character of the popular sovereign. He sketches how this kind of popular sovereignty might be instituitionalized under contemporary conditions, and indicates how this potentially can address both concerns over elitism and populism.


2007 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 76-133 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rajeev Bhargava

This Paper is divided into three sections. In the first section I provide a brief historical overview of Hindu-Muslim relations in India and of the condition of Indian Muslims today. I conclude by claiming that Indian Muslims are a marginalized minority who have been persistently underrepresented in political institutions, particularly in the Indian Parliament. This section is important for those who are less informed about these issues—and I assume that most readers fall in this category. In the second section, I examine the case for political representation for Muslims. This was a much debated issue in pre-independent India. It was debated with subtlety and in considerable detail in the Constituent Assembly debates on the Indian constitution. However, with the partition of the country and the formation of the separate state of Pakistan, all debate on the political representation of Muslims ceased. I examine the merits and demerits of the case for the political representation of Indian Muslims. I also attempt a brief explanation of why this issue has virtually disappeared from the public arena in India. I conclude in the section that although political representation of Muslims qua Muslims is desirable, it is still unfeasible in the prevailing situation in India. In other words, I would support the recommendation to the Indian State that political rights not to be granted to any religious community. If political theory was to remain a handmaiden of state policy, then the matter ends right here. However, since I believe that political theory must think for the long run and design just institutions and policies for the future, and since, there is, I claim, no principled objection to the political representation of Muslims, in the third and final section I briefly outline which of the several electoral mechanisms are best suited to ensure fair political representation for Muslims in the future. In my view, the principle of fair political representation for Indian Muslims is best fulfilled by a complex mechanism consisting of preferential voting in multi-member constituencies with intra-party quotas in proportion to the overall population of Muslims in the country.


Author(s):  
Enrique Cañas Kirby

ResumenLos movimientos de protesta estudiantil en la historia de Chile del siglo XX configuran un tipo de acción colectiva que tienen como patrón común un grado específico de influencia y agregación de otros actores sociales en momentos críticos del proceso político. Este artículo pretende averiguar el impacto que tuvo en Chile el movimiento 2011 sobre las estructuras formales de poder en el sistema político. Se han levantado teorías sociales acerca de este fenómeno que refieren a formas de participación y representación política que tienden a distanciarse de los asuntos cívicos. Chile no es un caso aislado en este respecto. Para saberlo, es necesario conocer las coordenadas sobre las cuales transcurrió la cuestión social en 2011, sus precedentes y proyecciones.Palabras clave: Movimientos sociales, representación política, teoría política, historia de ChileStudent movement in Chile 2011: Causes and characteristicsAbstractThe student protest movements in the history of Chile in the Twentieth Century formed a kind of collective action having in common a specific degree of influence and aggregation of other social actors in critical moments of the political process. This article aims to determine the impact of the 2011 movement in Chile on the formal structures of power in the political system. Social theories have been raised about this phenomenon referring to forms of political participation and representation that tend to get apart from civic affairs. Chile is not an isolated case in this regard. To find out, it is necessary to know the coordinates on which the social question occurred in 2011, its precedents and projections.Keywords: Social movements, political representation, political theory, history of ChileMovimento estudantil no Chile 2011: Causas e característicasResumoOs movimentos de protesto estudantis na história do Chile século XX configuramse como uma espécie de ação coletiva que tem como padrão em comum um determinado grau de influência e agregação de outros atores sociais em momentos críticos do processo político. Este artigo pretende indagar no impacto do movimento de 2011 no Chile, sobre as estruturas formais de poder no sistema político. Têm sido levantadas teorias sociais sobre este fenómeno referindose a formas de participação e representação política que tendem adistanciarse dos assuntos cívicos. Chile não é um caso isolado a este respeito.Para conhecêlo, é preciso saber as coordenadas sobre as quais transcorreu a questão social em 2011, seus antecedentes e projeções.Palavras-chave: Movimentos sociais, representação política, teoria política, história do Chile. 


2020 ◽  
pp. 21-66
Author(s):  
Miguel Vatter

This chapter reconstructs the origins of political theology in Carl Schmitt’s polemical engagement with the jurisprudence of Hans Kelsen and with the critique of sovereignty in English pluralist political theory. Kelsen sought to dismiss the idea of the state as a legal personality standing above the legal system as the product of an unscientific approach to jurisprudence because reliant on theological analogies with God’s transcendence over nature. This chapter shows that what Schmitt calls ‘political theology’ is a defence of these politico-theological analogies based on the claim that the political unity of a people requires a non-electoral form of representation of divine transcendence. The chapter then discusses Schmitt’s interpretation of Hobbes as recovering for modernity this Christian idea of political representation and compares it with the critique of Hobbes found in English pluralist theory. The chapter ends with a discussion of the debate between Schmitt and the German theologian Erik Peterson on Trinitarianism as ‘Christian’ political theology.


2017 ◽  
Vol 13 (6) ◽  
pp. 149
Author(s):  
Mohammed Abed Hammadi ◽  
Magda Ali Saleh

The study discusses the influence of the electoral system on the political representation of the social compositions of the Iraqi people, and the nature of their political participation in the ongoing political process in Iraq, by means of structuring entities and parties on basis of subsidiary identities, aside from the national identity. The study is divided into two research objectives. The first research objective is examining the nature of the political representation of the social compositions after the American invasion of Iraq in 2003, through exploring the religious and nationalistic diversities of the social compositions of the Iraqi society, in addition to discussing the political blocs and parties in the Iraqi system post 2003. The study realizes that these parties and political blocs depend on the sectarian and doctrinal dimension as well as the nationalistic ideology shedding its shadow on the entire political process. In turn, the political process employs quota systems as an approach towards its formation, which also brings about weak leadership and personnel loaded with personal gain against loyalty and citizenship. The second research objective is discussing the development of the electoral system and its effect on the representation of social compositions within the political process, through tracing three legislative elections taking place after 2003. The study reached several points of results, the most important of which is the influence of the electoral system on the political process and its effect on the nature of political representation of social compositions, since this system produces a majority out of a single composition at the expense of other social compositions in the Iraqi society. As a result, it gave rise to a house of representatives unable to fulfill its legislative and inspective functions, and that operates as a field for settling preset agendas and expressing authoritative judgments.


2018 ◽  
Vol 60 (6) ◽  
pp. 1485-1497
Author(s):  
Suyanto

Purpose The purpose of this study is to determine the dynamics of the Indonesian press since the reform era in 1998 to 2010 indirectly will see the relationship between the political systems of government with a media system in Indonesia. Design/methodology/approach This study is a qualitative descriptive which was drafted using the method of qualitative investigation using descriptive approach and library research, which gives an overview of the situation to obtain data based on observations on the site of investigation. Findings Based on Downs’s theory, political theory media takes the ideology of rational choice that is free from the subject. The political theory media developed Zaller is an extension of a study byAnthony Downs, An Economic Theory of Democracy. In 1957, Downs received the findings about the political process of the party competing for the support of rational voters. The findings in Downs’ study can actually explain the most important different forms in democratic politics generally. But Downs theory does not almost mention journalists and do not give roles on reporters independent in politics. Originality/value Dynamics of the Indonesian press since the reform era in 1998 to 2010 indirectly will see the relationship between the political systems of government with a media system in Indonesia. Many media companies set up businesses on newspapers or media even existing media companies to get stronger by establishing giant company or large media group. The originality for this paper shows the comprehensively political economy of media, media politics and research location which is conducted in Indonesia.


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