Jan 01, 1977 A dated but clearly written and interesting political economy text. Discussion of the roles of government/politics and market in the economy is particularly relevant to contemporary issues.
Politics and Markets. By Charles E. For many years Charles E.
Lindblom, Sterling Professor of Economics and Political Science at Yale, has advocated the political virtues of liberal democracy, the economic virtues of private markets, and the problem-solving virtues of American pluralist politics; but in this book Lindblom writes as a man whose hopes have been betrayed. “Grossly defective” is the final judgment he passes on “classical liberal and pluralist thought.” Since Lindblom has contributed to this body of ideas and interpretations at least as much as any other contemporary American political scientist or economist, this frank reconsideration of his own previous commitments is an occasion for interest—if not, indeed, dismay. Lindblom’s fundamental moral premise seems to be that in the realm of economics there are no “rights,” only “privileges.” Early in the book he muses on the possible validity of Proudhon’s aphorism that “property is theft.” By the middle of the book we are told that decisions concerning plant location and “the quality of goods and services” are really “public-policy decisions” that happen to have been “delegated” to businessmen rather than to government officials. Businessmen, and the rest of us as well, may think that such decisions follow property rights, but Lindblom admonishes us that they are artifacts of businessmen’s “privileged role in government. Unmatched by any leadership group other than government officials themselves.” By the end of the book, even these traditional “privileges” are called into question by emerging “collective purposes” like the search for peace, energy conservation, environmental protection, and economic stability. Lindblom’s conclusion: a “restructuring” is needed that “goes to fundamentals of the politico-economic order.” But how to proceed and how far to go?
If we will but open our eyes, lessons abound: the Communist societies, says Lindblom, have achieved more equality than Western societies and they might conceivably be proceeding toward eventual greater freedom as well. The truth of the matter is hard for us to discern, however, partly because Communist achievements have been associated historically with the cruelest and most extensive forms of repression, but partly too, Lindblom alleges, because we have all been indoctrinated by business and corporate interests. Politics and Markets is evidently designed as a work of counter-propaganda, attempting to undo the effects of alleged corporate and class indoctrinaton by making markets and “polyarchy” (Lindblom’s word for our form of government) look less benign while making bureaucratic central planning and authoritarian government look less terrible. The book aspires to a place in the tradition of political philosophy that begins with Plato and Aristotle and, for Lindblom, culminates in Adam Smith and Karl Marx. This tradition makes use not only of formal analytical and critical methods, like the explication of meanings and the ordering of social data, but also of the indirect methods of rhetoric and persuasion. And in fact Lindblom’s persuasive technique is varied and skillful.
For instance, there is an elaborate and studied even-handedness: “In unobscured view, no society looks defensible,” he writes. In the USSR there are fraudulent trials on false charges, censorship, thought control, and constant intimidation, whereas in the U.S. “great wealth still leaves a segment of the population in a demoralizing welfare system.” There is a reminder of his own fallibility: “I am not pretending impartiality” on the relative flaws in the U.S. And the USSR. There is the announced anticipation of being misunderstood: he says he is constrained to “put the point in its most cautious and acceptable form” that “the positive Communist claim to a humanitarian concern for freedom” may in some sense be meaningful and legitimate. Lindblom’s rhetorical skills are not at all contrived.
Their effectiveness comes partly from his long record of academic and intellectual accomplishments, and in even greater part from his obvious sincerity. But sincerity is no substitute for wise judgment when it comes to either moral or analytical issues, and, again and again, Lindblom’s judgment proves the very reverse of wise. Is it really possible, for instance, to accept his judgment that the United States is truly not a defensible society?
That it is no more defensible than the Soviet Union? Welfare recipients in the South Bronx may have to make do on a meager stipened and live in slum housing, but the inmates of the Gulag live on considerably less and may neither complain about their condition nor move out. In the United States some businessmen do, as Lindblom asserts, sometimes attempt to control elected officials through campaign contributions or even bribes. In the Soviet Union, of course, such attempts by the unofficial political elite, the Communist party, to control officialdom are unnecessary, because the party has expropriated official power lock, stock, and barrel. If environmental degradation in the United States makes this country “indefensible,” the Soviet Union is surely less defensible, though Lindblom fails to say so. As we know from the excellent research of Marshall Goldman, the Soviet record on environmental matters is quite poor; we do not know just how poor since there is no Moscow branch of the Sierra Club to trumpet it abroad. We do know, however, that the United States is engaged in a massive and costly effort to clean up and protect the environment.
From a statistical point of view, the distribution of income in European Communist countries is somewhat more equalitarian than it is in Western Europe. A person at the 25th income percentile in the Communist countries earns 82 per cent of the median income, as compared with his counterpart in the West who earns 76 per cent, according to Lindblom’s figures; at the 95th percentile, the corresponding incomes are 184 per cent under Communism and 216 per cent in the West. Whether this represents a “great accomplishment” of Communism, as Lindblom asserts, depends less on what one makes of the numbers than on what one makes of the idea of statistical equality. Despite contrary appearances, scarcely anyone in America or Europe cares much about statistical equality. People do care about conditions that may, or may not, be related to statistical inequality, like subsistence-level incomes, unemployment, ethnic and sex discrimination, and worker alienation. With the exception of unemployment, all these conditions afflict the Soviet Union and a good many of the other industrialized countries as well.
An increase in statistical equality might mitigate them to some extent. But it might also aggravate them if greater equality were to diminish aggregate wealth and thereby increase alienation, discrimination, etc. As for unemployment, we in the West mitigate this problem through social insurance, whereas the Soviets do so by obligatory job assignments. Lindblom euphemistically calls the Communist method “keeping a worker in the status of a participating member of the community.” Whenever such methods—that is, welfare-linked work requirements—are proposed for this country, liberals call them intolerably coercive and a sham (“dead-end jobs”).
Contents. Academic work Lindblom was one of the early developers and advocates of the theory of in policy and decision-making.
This view (also called ) takes a 'baby-steps', 'Muddling Through' or 'Echternach Theory' approach to decision-making processes. In it, policy change is, under most circumstances, rather than. He came to this view through his extensive studies of policies and throughout the industrialized world. These views are set out in two articles, separated by 20 years: 'The Science Of 'Muddling Through' (1959) and “Still Muddling, Not yet through” (1979), both published in.
Together with his friend, colleague and fellow Yale professor, Lindblom was a champion of the (or ) view of political elites and governance in the late 1950s and early 1960s. According to this view, no single, monolithic controls government and society, but rather a series of specialized elites compete and bargain with one another for control. It is this peaceful competition and compromise between elites in politics and the marketplace that drives free-market democracy and allows it to thrive. However, Lindblom soon began to see the shortcomings of Polyarchy with regard to democratic governance. When certain groups of elites gain crucial advantages, become too successful and begin to collude with one another instead of compete, Polyarchy can easily turn into. In his best known work, Politics And Markets (1977), Lindblom notes the 'Privileged position of business in Polyarchy'.
He also introduces the concept of 'circularity', or 'controlled volitions' where 'even in the democracies, masses are persuaded to ask from elites only what elites wish to give them.' Thus any real choices and competition are limited. Worse still, any development of alternative choices or even any serious discussion and consideration of them is effectively discouraged.
An example of this is the system in the United States, which is almost completely dominated by two powerful parties that often reduce complex issues and decisions down to two simple choices. Related to this is the concurrent concentration of the U.S. Mass communications media into an, which effectively controls who gets to participate in the national dialogue and who suffers a censorship of silence. Politics And Markets provoked a wide range of critical reactions that extended beyond the realms of academia. The Mobil Corporation took out a full page ad in to denounce it. This helped the book achieve greater notoriety, which in turn helped it get onto (a rarity for a scholarly work).
Due to his criticism of democratic capitalism and polyarchy, and also for his seeming praise for the political-economy of, Lindblom was (perhaps predictably) labeled a 'Closet Communist' and a 'Creeping Socialist' by conservative critics in the west. And Communist critics chided him for not going far enough. Originally, Dahl, too, disagreed with many of Lindblom's observations and conclusions; but in a recent work he also has become critical of polyarchy in general and its U.S.
Form in particular. In The Market System: What It Is, How It Works, and What to Make of It (2001), Lindblom eloquently echoed and expanded upon many of his concerns raised in Politics And Markets. The most important of these is that while the is the best mechanism yet devised for creating and fostering wealth and innovation, it is not very efficient at assigning non-economic values and distributing social or economic justice. He died on January 30, 2018 at the age of 100. Select bibliography. Lindblom, Charles E. (1959), 'The handling of norms in policy analysis', in; et al., The allocation of economic resources: essays in honor of Bernard Francis Haley, Stanford, California:,.
Lindblom, Charles E. (1959), The science of 'muddling through'. Public Administration Review, 19, pp. 79–88. Lindblom, Charles E.; Braybrooke, David (1963), A strategy of decision: policy evaluation as a social process.
Lindblom, Charles E. (1965), The intelligence of democracy,.
Lindblom, Charles E.; (1976), Politics, economics, and welfare: planning and politico-economic systems resolved into basic social processes, with a new pref. By the authors. Lindblom, Charles E.
(1977), Politics and markets: the world's political-economic systems, New York: Basic. Lindblom, Charles E. (1979), Still muddling, not yet through 'Public Administration Review', 39, pp. 517–526. Lindblom, Charles E.; Cohen, David K. (1979), Usable knowledge: social science and social problem solving Yale University Press. Lindblom, Charles E.
(1984), The policy-making process, 2nd edition, Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall. Lindblom, Charles E. (1990), 'Inquiry and change: the troubled attempt to understand and shape society',. Lindblom, Charles E.; Woodhouse, Edward J.
(1993), The policy-making process, 3rd. Ed., New Jersey:. Lindblom, Charles E. (2001), The market system: what it is, how it works, and what to make of it,. Blockland, Hans; Rune Premfors, and Ross Zucker (2018), 'In Memoriam: Charles Edward Lindblom, APSA President (1980 - 1981)' PS: Political Science & Politics (Vol.
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