Abstract
Mancur Olson (1932–1998) belongs to the public choice school, i.e., the study of how economic decisions are made within organizations. A central premise in this tradition is that economically rational individual behavior does not necessarily lead to economically rational group behavior. In this way, “economic man” is brought into the political arena to explain, for example, how special interest groups will pursue their own narrow self-interests at the expense of economic growth. As more and more interest groups accumulate over time and persist, increasing pressures for economically harmful redistribution will occur and slow down economic growth. This Olsonian theory has wide-ranging implications. Elinor Ostrom, for example, paid tribute to it as “…the central subject of political science” (Ostrom 1998, p. 1).
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References
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Further Reading
Congleton, R. D. (2015). The logic of collective action and beyond. Public Choice, 164, 217–234.
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Svendsen, G.T. (2020). Olson, Mancur. In: Harris, P., Bitonti, A., Fleisher, C., Skorkjær Binderkrantz, A. (eds) The Palgrave Encyclopedia of Interest Groups, Lobbying and Public Affairs . Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-13895-0_47-1
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Olson, Mancur (1932–1998)- Published:
- 01 December 2021
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-13895-0_47-2
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- 11 March 2020
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-13895-0_47-1