A Theory of the Incentives Facing Political Organizations

Abstract

There is a widespread (and, in the literature of neo-corporatism, a particularly urgent) need for a theory of the incentives facing political and partly political organizations. This article develops such a theory, drawing particularly upon the concepts of encom passing and of narrow coalitions for collective action, and on the analysis of bargaining in bilateral monopolies. Unified political parties in political systems with some "winner- take-all" characteristics are found likely to have an encompassing character, and therefore to have some incentive to act broadly in accordance with one general conception or another of the social interest. Hegemonic powers in an international system also have relatively constructive incentives. Narrow distributional coalitions will, by contrast, face uniquely perverse incentives. With the aid of this theory of the incentives facing political organizations neo-corporatism can be raised to the theoretical level and shown to have some potential for reducing the social costs of distributional struggle. The long-term dynamics of neo-corporatist organizations are, however, likely to lead to antisocial developments, so this aspect of the matter especially needs further research.