Abstract
In this paper we give an introduction to the concept of the political entrepreneur and a selective survey of some theoretical and empirical work using it. We argue that the figure of the entrepreneur is as important in politics as in economics and business. In particular, it helps to clarify some difficulties in public choice theory in a similar way as the introduction of the economic entrepreneur into microeconomic theory facilitates a dynamic analysis of the market process. In particular, the idea of the political entrepreneur helps to explain the paradox of voting and the formation of large interest groups. Several examples of case studies on political entrepreneurship are briefly discussed, some of them showing economically successful political-entrepreneurial activities, some others exhibiting pure rent seeking. An evaluation of the welfare effects of political entrepreneurship is therefore still an open question, hence more theoretical and empirical research on political entrepreneurship is strongly required.
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Neck, R. (2016). The Political Entrepreneur: Deus ex Machina of Public Choice Theory?. In: Bögenhold, D., Bonnet, J., Dejardin, M., Garcia Pérez de Lema, D. (eds) Contemporary Entrepreneurship. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-28134-6_13
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-28134-6_13
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