CoChat
Sign Up
Cited by 63Economic Theory and InstitutionsSocial Policy and Reform StudiesPolicy Transfer and Learning

The Political Economy of Ideas: On Ideas Versus Interests in Policymaking

Open access
Mukand, Sharun, Rodrik, Dani·2018·National Bureau of Economic Research
DOI 10.3386/w24467
Open this paper in CoChat — free account

Abstract

We develop a conceptual framework to highlight the role of ideas as a catalyst for policy and institutional change.We make an explicit distinction between ideas and vested interests and show how they feed into each other.In doing so the paper integrates the Keynes-Hayek perspective on the importance of ideas with the currently more fashionable Stigler-Becker (interests only) approach to political economy.We distinguish between two kinds of ideational politics -the battle among different worldviews on the efficacy of policy (worldview politics) versus the politics of victimhood, pride and identity (identity politics).Political entrepreneurs discover identity and policy 'memes' (narratives, cues, framing) that shift beliefs about how the world works or a person's belief of who he is (i.e.identity).Our framework identifies a complementarity between worldview politics and identity politics and illustrates how they may reinforce each other.In particular, an increase in identity polarization may be associated with a shift in views about how the world works.Furthermore, an increase in income inequality is likely to result in a greater incidence of ideational politics.Finally, we show how ideas may not just constrain, but also 'bite' the interests that helped propagate them in the first instance.

The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.

Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.

A few free checks a day · papers already verified open instantly · results are public

Integrity signals

Registry

Crossref · 10.3386/w24467

Cites

2 of 2 references verified0 citation errors · 0 not checkable

Statistics

Claims the paper makes

The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.

Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.

A few free checks a day · papers already verified open instantly · results are public

Claims other papers make about this one

Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?

  • The policymaking process and jury-based law system are often characterized by debates over facts and narrative interpretations of those facts.

    “For this reason, the policymaking process and the jury-based law system are often characterized not only by debates over facts but also by the narrative interpretations of those facts (Mukand & Rodrik, 2018; Pennington & Hastie, 1992).”

    From Stories in Action. (2022) · cites this paper as Mukand & Rodrik, 2018

    Section 2, “The Framework,” says political ideas can shift citizens’ beliefs about the underlying state of the world, and the Introduction describes framing policy issues to influence voters. This supports the policymaking portion of the sentence, but the paper does not address debates or narrative interpretations in jury-based law. (LLM, conf=0.84)

    Experimental — accuracy not yet measured

Self-check

Percentages, sums and reported differences re-computed from the paper’s own numbers.

The self-check needs the paper’s full text.

Cites

Flagged first, then by citations

Research works printed but not linked: 51

  1. Acemogu, D., Robinson, J. A. (2005). Economic origins of dictatorship and democracy. Cambridge University Press..
  2. Akerlof, G.A. and Snower, D.J., 2016. Bread and bullets. Journal of Economic Behavior Organi- zation, 126, pp.58-71.
  3. Akerlof, George A., and Rachel E. Kranton (2000) "Economics and identity." Quarterly journal of Economics, 715-753.
  4. Bartels, Larry (2005), "Homer Simpson Gets a Tax Cut: Inequality and Public Policy in the American Mind", Perspectives on Politics, 3(01), 15-31.
  5. Bartels, L. M. (2006). What's the Matter with What's the Matter with Kansas?. Quarterly Journal of Political Science, 1(2), 201-226.
  6. Becker, G.S., 1983. A theory of competition among pressure groups for political influence. The Quarterly Journal of Economics, pp.371-400.
  7. Benabou, R. (2008). "Ideology". Journal of the European Economic Association, 6(2013), 321-352.
  8. Benjamin, D. J., Choi, J. J., Strickland, A. J. (2010). Social Identity and Preferences. The American economic review, 100(4), 1913.
  9. Blouin, Arthur Sharun W. Mukand. (2018). Erasing Ethnicity? Propaganda, Nation Building and Identity in Rwanda. The Journal of Political Economy, forthcoming.
  10. Blyth, M. (2013). Austerity: the history of a dangerous idea. Oxford University Press.
  11. Bordalo, P., K. Coffman, Geniaolli, N. and A. Shleifer (2015) Stereotypes, Quarterly Journal of Economics
  12. Calomiris, C.W. and Haber, S.H., 2014. Fragile by design: the political origins of banking crises and scarce credit. Princeton University Press.
  13. Campbell, J. L. (1998). Institutional analysis and the role of ideas in political economy. Theory and society, 27(3), 377-409.
  14. Campbell, J. L. (2002). Ideas, politics, and public policy. Annual review of sociology, 21-38.
  15. Cerulo, K. A. (1997). Identity construction: New issues, new directions. Annual review of Sociology, 385-409.
  16. Collier, P., 2016. The cultural foundations of economic failure: A conceptual toolkit. Journal of Economic Behavior Organization, 126, pp.5-24.
  17. Dawkins, R. (2006). The selfish gene (No. 199). Oxford university press.
  18. DellaVigna, S. and Gentzkow, M., 2010. Persuasion: Empirical Evidence. Annual Review of Economics, 2(1), pp.643-669.
  19. De Marzo, P. and Vayanos, D., Jeffrey Zwiebel (2003)"Persuasion Bias. Social Influence and Unidimensional Opinions?", Quarterly Journal of Economics, August, pp.909-67.
  20. Dietrich, F. and List, C. (2011). "A model of non-informational preference change". Journal of theoretical politics, 23(2), 145-164.
  21. Fearon, J. D., Laitin, D. D. (2000). Violence and the social construction of ethnic identity. International organization, 54(04), 845-877.
  22. Gennaioli, N., Shleifer, A. (2010). What Comes to Mind?. The Quarterly journal of economics, 125(4), 1399-1433.
  23. Irwin, D. A. (1989). Political economy and Peel's repeal of the Corn Laws. Economics and Politics, 1(1), 41-59.
  24. Gilens, M. (2012). Affluence and influence: Economic inequality and political power in America. Princeton University Press.
  25. Gilens, M., Page, B. I. (2014). "Testing theories of American politics: Elites, interest groups, and average citizens". Perspectives on Politics, 12(03), 564-581.
  26. Glaeser, E. L. (2005). "The political economy of hatred". The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 45-86.
  27. Hayek, F.A., (1949). "The intellectuals and socialism". The University of Chicago Law Review, 16(3), pp.417-433.
  28. Iyengar, S. and Kinder, D. R. (2010). News that matters: Television and American opinion. University of Chicago Press.
  29. Jackson, M. S. (2011). "Priming the sleeping giant: The dynamics of Latino political identity and vote choice". Political Psychology, 32(4), 691-716.
  30. Jain, S., Majumdar, S., and Mukand, S. W. (2014). "Walk the line: Conflict, state capacity and the political dynamics of reform". Journal of Development Economics, 111, 150-166.
  31. Kahneman, D. and Amos Tversky (1974). Judgment under uncertainty: Heuristics and biases. Science, 185(4157), 1124-1131..
  32. Lopez, E. and Leighton, W., 2012. Madmen, intellectuals, and academic scribblers: The economic engine of political change. Stanford University Press.
  33. Mendelberg, T. (2001). The race card: Campaign strategy, implicit messages, and the norm of equality. Princeton University Press.
  34. Molden, D.C. (2014). Understanding Priming Effects in Social Psychology: What is "Social Prim- ing" and How does it Occur?. Social Cognition, 32(Supplement), pp.1-11.
  35. Mullainathan, Sendhil, Andrei Shleifer, and Joshua Schwartzstein. (2008), "Coarse Thinking and Persuasion.? Quarterly Journal of Economics 123(2): 577-619
  36. Persson, T. and G.Tabellini (2000) Political Economics, Cambridge: MIT Press.
  37. Piketty, T. (2014). Capital in the 21st Century. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
  38. Prasad, M. (2012). "The Popular Origins of Neoliberalism in the Reagan Tax Cut of 1981". Journal of Policy History, 24(03), 351-383.
  39. Quadagno, J. (1996). The color of welfare: How racism undermined the war on poverty. Oxford University Press.
  40. Rodrik, D. (2014). "When Ideas Trump Interests: Preferences, Worldviews, and Policy Innova- tions". The Journal of Economic Perspectives, 28(1), 189-208.
  41. Robbins, L. (1963). On the Relations between Politics and Economics (pp. 3-23). Palgrave Macmillan UK.
  42. Rosenfeld, S. A. (2011). Common Sense. Harvard University Press.
  43. Ruggie, J. G. (1998). What makes the world hang together? Neo-utilitarianism and the social constructivist challenge. International organization, 52(04), 855-885.
  44. Schonhardt-Bailey, C. (2006). From the corn laws to free trade: interests, ideas, and institutions in historical perspective. MIT Press.
  45. Sethi, R., and Yildiz, M. (2012). "Public disagreement". American Economic Journal: Microeco- nomics, 4(3), 57-95.
  46. Shayo, M. (2009). A model of social identity with an application to political economy: Nation, class, and redistribution. American Political Science Review, 103(02), 147-174.
  47. Shepsle (1985), "Comment of Why the Regulators Chose to Deregulate," in Roger Noll (ed.), Regulatory Policy and the Social Sciences (Berkeley: University of California Press): 231-39.
  48. Stigler, G. J. (1971). "The theory of economic regulation". The Bell journal of economics and management science, 3-21.
  49. Stigler, G. J. (1982). The economists and the problem of monopoly. The American Economic Review, 72(2), 1-11.
  50. Wendt, A. (1999). Social theory of international politics. Cambridge University Press.
  51. Wilkinson, S. I. (2006). Votes and violence: Electoral competition and ethnic riots in India. Cam- bridge University Press.

Cited by

Sorted by citations

Authors
Mukand, S., & Rodrik, D.
Affiliations
National Bureau of Economic Research (US)
ORCID
Rodrik, Dani
Venue
National Bureau of Economic Research
Publisher
National Bureau of Economic Research
Published
2018-03
DOI
10.3386/w24467
OpenAlex
W2796086083
Cited by
63
References
2
Citations by year
2026: 2 · 2025: 4 · 2024: 4 · 2023: 8 · 2022: 20 · 2021: 9 · 2020: 7 · 2019: 8 · 2018: 1
Type
report
Language
en
Open access
Locations
  • National Bureau of Economic Research (publishedVersion)
  • RePEc: Research Papers in Economics (submittedVersion)
Topics
  • Social Sciences › Economics, Econometrics and Finance › Economics and Econometrics › Economic Theory and Institutions
  • Social Sciences › Political Science and International Relations › Social Policy and Reform Studies
  • Social Sciences › Political Science and International Relations › Policy Transfer and Learning
Keywords
ideas, vested interests, identity politics, political entrepreneurs, memes, framing, identity polarization, income inequality, policy change, institutional change

About these checks

Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.

Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.

Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.

What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›

Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review