Against a voiceless world: Albert O. Hirschman’s political economics as an alternative to public choice

En contra de un mundo sin voz: la economía política de Albert O. Hirschman como alternativa a la teoría de la elección pública

Rafael Galvão De Almeida

Iberian Journal of the History of Economic Thought, 2021, vol. 8, issue 1, 13-22

Abstract: This article analyzes the contributions of Albert O. Hirschman to the field of political economy and his issues with public choice. Although he was not explicitly affiliated to any school of thought, Hirschman worked with both disciplines of economics and political science to understand questions such as “why do people vote and participate in politics?” He was disappointed with what mainstream economics provided and elaborated the exit-voice-loyalty (EVL) model to understand mechanisms of action in politics and the economy. His EVL model has been widely read, but it did not develop a paradigm around it and was ignored by economists due to its lack of formal models. His work was thus at odds with public choice theory. He also criticized the concept of free-riding and the application of rational choice theory to politics. Hirschman went on to work on a political economy of citizenship in his works (Hirschman, 1977, [1982] 2002, 1991), to find answers apart from rational choice theory, which he considered harmful to political participation.

Keywords: Albert Hirschman; Public choice; Political economics; Citizenship.; Albert Hirschman; Elección pública; Economía política; Ciudadanía. (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: B25 D7 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://eprints.ucm.es/id/eprint/67777/1/21-8-1(13-22).pdf (application/pdf)

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:ucm:ijohet:v:8:y:2021:i:1:p:13-22

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
Dpto. Historia e Instituciones Económicas I. Facultad de CC. Económicas y Empresariales, Universidad Complutense de Madrid. Campus de Somosaguas. E-28223 Pozuelo de Alarcón (Madrid)

DOI: 10.5209/ijhe.70600

Access Statistics for this article

Iberian Journal of the History of Economic Thought is currently edited by Dpto. Historia e Instituciones Económicas I, Facultad de CC. Económicas y Empresariales, Universidad Complutense de Madrid.

More articles in Iberian Journal of the History of Economic Thought from Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Facultad de Ciencias Económicas y Empresariales, Dpto. Historia e Instituciones Económicas I. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Águeda González Abad ().