Democracy,creeping socialism,and ideological socialism in rent-seeking societies

Rent-seeking societies suffer from a serious distortion of incentives. Incentives to engage in distributional struggles, to seek contrived transfers are strong, but incentives to engage in productive work are too weak. Stagnation and some unemployment should be expected. Long lasting democracies within unchanged borders create a permissive environment for rent-seeking. The provision of rents very much depends on government. The stronger the governmental involvement in the economy, the higher social security spending, the more rents the government is likely to generate. Therefore, creeping socialism understood as increased government control of the economy should reinforce the rent-seeking society and the corresponding negative effects on growth and employment. Whether such creeping socialism is backed by ideological socialism or not should make little difference for growth or employment. These ideas have been tested and partially supported by a 19 nation sample of industrial democracies, using data from the sixties and seventies. By and large, the rent-seeking approach is fairly successful in explaining national differences in economic growth rates, but receives ambiguous support or less for unemployment. Olson's (1982, 1983) proposition about the negative impact of long lasting democracy within unchanged borders on economic growth is much better supported than the growth-retarding effects of government revenues or social security spending are.     

Democracy as Procedure and Democracy as Regime

In the intellectual confusion prevailing since the demise of Marxism and "marxism", the attempt is made to define democracy as a matter of pure procedure, explicitly avoiding and condemning any reference to substantive objectives. It can easily be shown, however, that the idea of a purely procedural "democracy" is incoherent and self-contradictory. No legal system whatsoever and no government can exist in the absence of substantive conditions which cannot be left to chance or to the workings of the "market" but must be posited as objectives of political activity. The confusion results from a deficient understanding of what makes a society and an empty idea of "freedom". The objective of politics is not happiness, an affair to be left to the individuals, but it certainly is liberty understood as participation in the governance of the polity; it is also the pursuit of the common good, defined as the sum of the prerequisites and facilitations of individual autonomy depending on collective action, and as the realization of commonly agreed collective goals.     

French socialism and the fifth republic

The French Socialist Party's strategic acceptance of presidentialism in the Fifth Republic from 1971 created a relationship within the party which involved its discourse, its organisation, and the treatment of leadership within Socialism. The relationship between these elements changed after 1981 as a result of the party's winning the Presidency and attaining government. In the 1984–86 period, ‘modernisation’ began the adaptation of discourse to the new relationship. The 1987 party congress saw the partial adaptation of organisation. However, the problems encountered in the third area, leadership, after March 1986, demonstrated how problematic the triple relation organisation/discourse/leadership was, and how profound the effects of the Republic have been.     

The spirits of capitalism and socialism

The World Values Survey contains an item on ownership which is polled 200 times in 92?countries at the four waves of 1990, 1995, 2000 and 2005. These polls are developed into the CS-score that measures the aggregate mass support for capitalism and socialism. Four hypotheses are advanced and tested to explain the wide variation in the 200 CS-scores. It is due to: the cross-country distribution of income, and consequently the West stands out as the most capitalist-minded area of the world; institutions of the country such as legal quality; the left-right dimension in politics; and cultural differences.     

Democracy and populism

He is currently president of the New England Political Science Association and has been a member of the Advisory Council of the National Endowment for the Humanities. His books include America’s Constitutional Soul; Taming the Prince: The Ambivalence of Modern Executive Power; Machiavelli’s Florentine Histories;and a new translation of Machiavelli’s The Prince.