Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-94fs2 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-20T00:10:09.706Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

It's Not Whether You Win or Lose, but How You Play the Game: Self-Interest, Social Justice, and Mass Attitudes toward Market Transition

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 August 2004

RAYMOND M. DUCH  and
HARVEY D. PALMER
RAYMOND M. DUCH
Affiliation:
University of Houston
HARVEY D. PALMER
Affiliation:
University of Mississippi
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

To explore systematic differences in economic reasoning and what might account for them, we investigate how sociocultural conditions affect transitions to market economies in the West African country of Benin. We probe the importance of several factors: basic economic norms, utility maximization behavior, individual-level personal capital, and individual-level social capital. The evidence, based on experiments embedded in an opinion survey, indicates that Beninese citizens widely share commitments to the basic foundations of economic interaction, e.g., property rights. The nature of social capital varies across cultural and political contexts and accounts for cross-contextual variation in the costs associated with cooperative behavior and in utility maximization behavior.

Type
ARTICLES
Information
American Political Science Review , Volume 98 , Issue 3 , August 2004 , pp. 437 - 452
Copyright
© 2004 by the American Political Science Association

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Barro Robert. 1991 “Economic Growth in a Cross-Section of Countries.” Quarterly Journal of Economics 106: 407– 443.Google Scholar
Banégas Richard. “Marchandisation du vote, cityoyenneté et consolidation démocratique au Bénin.” Politique Africaine 69: 75– 88.
Becker Gary S. 1996 Accounting for Tastes. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Becker Gary S., James L. Glaeser, and Kevin M. Murphy. 1999 American Economics Review 89: (2) 145– 49.
Bourgoin Henry. 1984 L'Afrique Malade du Management. Paris: Editions Jean Picollec.
Burns Nancy, Kay Lehman Schlozman, and Sidney Verba. 1997 “The Public Consequences of Private Inequality: Family Life and Citizen Participation.” American Political Science Review 91: (2) 373– 89.Google Scholar
Chrystal K. Alec, and David A. Peel. 1986 “What Economists Can Learn from Political Science and Vice Versa.” American Economic Review 76: 62– 64.Google Scholar
de Soto Hernando. 2000 The Mystery of Capital: Why Capitalism Triumphs in the West and Fails Everywhere Else. New York: Basic Books.
Diamond Jared. 1997 Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies. New York: Norton.
Duch Raymond M., and Guy D. Whitten. 2003 “Democracy and Poor Education: A Dangerous Cocktail?” Manuscript. University of Houston.
Easterly William. 2002 The Elusive Quest for Growth: Economists' Adventures and Misadventures in the Tropics. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Easton David. 1963 The Political System. New York: Wiley.
Eckel Catherine, and Rick K. Wilson. 2003 “The Human Face of Game Theory: Trust and Reciprocity in Sequential Games, In Trust and Reciprocity: Interdisciplinary Lessons for Experimental Research, eds. Elinor Ostrom and James M. Walker. New York: Russell Sage Foundation.
Ellickson Robert. 1991 Order without Law: How Neighbors Settle Disputes. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Fehr Ernst, and Simon Gachter. 2000 “Fairness and Retaliation: The Economics of Reciprocity.” Journal of Economic Perspectives 14: (3) 159– 81.Google Scholar
Fehr Ernst, and Klaus M. Schmidt. 1999 “A Theory of Fairness, Competition and Cooperation.” Quarterly Journal of Economics 64: (August) 817– 68.Google Scholar
Forsythe Robert, Joel L. Horowitz, N. E. Savin, and Martin Sefton. 1994 “Fairness in Simple Bargaining Experiments.” Games and Economic Behavior 6: 347– 69.Google Scholar
Frye Timothy. 2000 Brokers and Bureaucrats. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.
Gibson James L., and Amanda Gouws. 1999 “Truth and Reconciliation in South Africa: Attributions of Blame and the Struggle over Apartheid.” American Political Science Review 93: 501– 18.Google Scholar
Glaeser Edward L., David Laibson, Jose A. Scheinkman, and Christine L. Soutter. 2000 “Measuring Trust.” Quarterly Journal of Economics 65: (August) 811– 46.Google Scholar
Glaeser Edward L. 1999 “Learning in Cities.” Journal of Urban Economics 46: (September) 25– 77.Google Scholar
Greene William H. 2000 Econometric Analysis. 4th ed. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall.
Harrison Lawrence E., and Samuel P. Huntington. Eds. 2000 Culture Matters: How Culture Shapes Human Progress. New York: Basic Books.
Heinrich Joseph. 2000 “Does Culture Matter in Economic Behavior? Ultimatum Game Bargaining Among the Machiguenga of the Peruvian Amazon.” American Economic Review (September): 90 973– 79.Google Scholar
Henrich Joseph, Robert Boyd, Samuel Bowles, Colin Camerer, Ernst Fehr, Herbert Gintis, and Richard McElreath. 2001 “Cooperation, Reciprocity and Punishment in Fifteen Small-scale Societies.” American Economics Review 91: (May) 73– 78.Google Scholar
Inglehart Ronald. 1997 Modernization and Post-modernization: Cultural, Economic and Political Change in 43 Societies. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Kahneman Daniel, Jack L. Knetsch, and Richard Thaler. 1986 “Fairness as a Constraint on Profit Seeking: Entitlements in the Market.” American Economic Review 76: 728– 41.Google Scholar
Lucas Robert E. 1988 “The Mechanics of Economic Development.” Journal of Monetary Economics 22: (May) 92– 96.Google Scholar
McKinnon Ronald I. 1993 The Order of Economic Liberalization. 2nd ed. Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press.
Magnusson Bruce. 1996 “Benin: Legitimating Democracy: New Institutions and the Historical problem of Economic Crisis.” In L'Afrique politique 1996, democratization: arrê ts sur images. Paris: Karthala, 33– 54.
Milgrom Paul, Douglass C. North, and Barry R. Weingast. 1990 “Institutions and the Revival of Trade: The Law Merchant, Private Judges, and Champaigne Fairs.” Economics and Politics 2: (1) 1– 23.Google Scholar
Moore Barrington,Jr. 1966 Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy. Boston, MA: Beacon.
North Douglass C. 1981 Structure and Change in Economic History. New York: Norton.
Olson Mancur. 1993 “Dictatorship, Democracy, and Development.” American Political Science Review 87: (September) 567– 76.Google Scholar
Ostrom Elinor. 1990 Governing the Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Palmer Monte. 1989 Dilemmas of Political Development. 4th ed. Itasca, IL: F. E. Peacock.
Pipes Richard. 1999 Property and Freedom. New York: Vintage Books.
Prasnikar Vesna, and Roth Alvin E. 1992 “Considerations of Fairness and Strategy: Experimental Data from Sequential Games.” Quarterly Journal of Economics 57: (August) 865– 88.Google Scholar
Putnam Robert. 1993 Making Democracy Work: Civic Traditions in Modern Italy. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Rabushka Alvin. 1974 Politics in Plural Societies: A Theory of Racial Harmony. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press.
Romer Paul. 1990 “Endogenous Technological Change.” Journal of Political Economy 99: (5) S71– S102.Google Scholar
Roth Alvin E. Vesna Prasnikar, Masahiro Okuno-Fujiwara, and Shmuel Zamir. 1991 “Bargaining and Market Behavior in Jerusalem, Ljubljana, Pittsburgh, and Tokyo: An Experimental Study.” American Economics Review 81: 1068– 95.Google Scholar
Schejtman Alexander. 1984 “The Peasant Economy: Internal Logic, Articulation, and Persistence.” In The Political Economy of Development and Underdevelopment. 3rd ed., ed. Charles K. Wilber. New York: Random House.
Smelser Neil, and Richard Swedberg., eds. 1994 Handbook of Economic Sociology. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Snidal Duncan. 1994 “Endogenous Actors, Heterogeneity and Institutions.” Journal of Theoretical Politics 6: (4) 449– 72.Google Scholar
Solow Robert M. 1957 “Technical Change and the Aggregate Production Function.” Review of Economics and Statistics 39: 312– 20.Google Scholar
Weber Max. 1958 [1904–5] The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. New York: Scribner's.
Weingast Barry R. 1997 “The Political Foundation of Democracy and the Rule of Law.” American Political Science Review 91: 245– 63.Google Scholar
Submit a response

Comments

No Comments have been published for this article.