Symbolic Politics and the Regulation of Executive Compensation

Sandra L. Suárez

Politics & Society, 2014, vol. 42, issue 1, 73-105

Abstract: When politicians feel popular pressure to act, but are unwilling or unable to address the root cause of the problem, they resort to symbolic policymaking. In this paper, I examine excessive executive compensation as an issue that rose to the top of the political agenda during both the Great Depression and the Great Recession. Presidential candidates, members of Congress, the media, and the public alike blamed corporate greed for the economic downturn. In both instances, however, enacted legislation stopped short of changing the way in which executive pay was determined or placing effective, enforceable limits on it. I analyze the nature of the democratic process and contend that public policy scholars need to pay more attention to the occurrence of symbolic policies. The category of symbolic policies offers a more accurate approach to understanding the politics of executive compensation in the United States during the two crises and helps explain why, in spite of the recent legislative efforts, it continues to rise.

Keywords: symbolic politics; executive pay; inequality; Great Recession; Great Depression (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2014
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0032329213512980 (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:polsoc:v:42:y:2014:i:1:p:73-105

DOI: 10.1177/0032329213512980

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Politics & Society
Bibliographic data for series maintained by SAGE Publications ().