General interest and redistribution with self-interested voters: Social contract revisited

I provide a rational solution to the lasting paradox that citizens be more concerned with “general interest” than most economic agents. I show who that, in the face of fundamental political uncertainty, the social contract, as conceptualized by Jean-Jacques Rousseau two centuries ago, provides to self-interested voters an effective mechanism of self-insurance that limits amount of involuntary transfers. My positive theory of voter behavior and general interest has but a formal resemblance with the normative theory of welfare judgments and social justice. Even when the efficiency aspects of redistribution are not considered, there is no way in which the final distribution of incomes could be equal if the initial distribution of incomes were unequal! The role of political parties in this model is to manipulate the distribution of political chances in order to maximize their probability of winning elections. I show for instance that “social instability” and progressive redistribution characterize the equilibrium outcome of a two-class democracy in which the lower class forms a majority.     

Unions in politics: public opinion in the United Kingdom and Denmark

Abstract. The paper examines public opinion about the political involvement of trade unions in the UK and Denmark. Both are systems in which trade unions are linked to a political party and both have high rates of union density. However, whereas British unions have contested governments of both parties and opposed regulation of industrial relations, Danish unions have a tradition of cooperation with government and are entangled in a web of institutionalized industrial relations. Results, however, are amazingly similar. Both the public at large and union members accept unions in general and also their political involvement, but oppose contestation of political authority. Irrespective of union behaviour, beliefs in the supremacy of parliament seems to be firmly rooted in public opinion.     

IMPACT ASSESSMENT AND DEMOCRATIC POLITICS

The advent of impact assessment as a tool of policy is the latest chapter in our understanding of the relationship between science and politics. As such, it presents at least two challenges to democratic politics. Given its emphasis on appropriate procedural character of conteniporary democratic systems. And by raising the value of technical and scientific information in environmental disputes, impact assessment poses a challenge to existing concepts of popular sovereignty, based as they are on interest and preference rather than knowledge. These challenges, however, do not rep- resent irreconcilable differences. Although there may be an inherent ten- sion between impact assessment and democratic politics, there are also areas of affinity between the two. And we are destined to accept and adapt to this tension because, in fact, understanding is one of our principal defenses against tyranny.     

Traditionalism in Swaziland: The economic basis of a Southern African monarchy

Swaziland: Tradition and Change in a Southern African Kingdom by Alan R.

Booth Westview Press, Boulder (Colorado), and Gower, Aldershot (England), 1983. xi plus 156 pp. including maps, illustrations, tables, notes, bibliography and index. $19,50.