تئوری کارافرینی سیاسی A Theory of Political Entrepreneurship

Abstract This paper adapts the entrepreneurial theory developed by Richard Cantillon, Frank Knight, and Ludwig von Mises to the theory of “political entrepreneurship.” Political entrepreneurship is an outgrowth of the theory of the market entrepreneur, and derives from extending entrepreneurial theory from the market into the political sphere of action. By applying the theory of the entrepreneur to political behavior, we provide a basis for identifying political entrepreneurs, and for separating them analytically from other government agents. The essence of political entrepreneurship is the redirection of production from the path it would have taken in an unregulated market. Nevertheless, this production does produce an income stream to political entrepreneurs which closely resembles the profit of market entrepreneurs. Keywords: Entrepreneurship, Political Entrepreneurship, Ownership, Production, Uncertainty, Income Distribution, Profit and Loss. ۱٫ Introduction1 Recent literature has stressed the importance of capital ownership, decision-making, and uncertainty-bearing in entrepreneurial theory [1-5], emphasizing the entrepreneurial theory of Richard Cantillon, Frank Knight, and Ludwig von Mises. This paper seeks to extend this analysis to a relatively underdeveloped area in economics: the theory of “political entrepreneurship.”۲ We develop an economic theory of political entrepreneurship; one which demonstrates that political entrepreneurship distorts the structure of production, regardless of the presence of anti-social behavior such as rent-seeking. While some theories speak of entrepreneurship in a metaphorical fashion, “political entrepreneurship” is a truly economic function precisely because entrepreneurial theory may be applied to the political realm without sacrificing realism, and without reference to analogy and metaphor. There are three major branches of thought in the theory of political entrepreneurship which are relevant to this paper.3 The first is found in the public choice literature. This branch has largely focused on the rent-seeking aspects of political activity: the stifling of competition through legal barriers to entry, lobbying and special interest practices, legislation brokering, coalition-building, etc.4 The second branch focuses on the entrepreneurial element more than the political, and largely relies on the entrepreneurial theory of Israel Kirzner, which emphasizes alertness and discovery as the key elements in entrepreneurial behavior. Entrepreneurship in the market is a metaphor for an entrepreneurial element which exists in all human behavior. In this theory, political entrepreneurs are individuals alert to opportunities to profit from  the political system.5 These two literatures often incorporate a third approach based on the new institutionalism, which emphasizes the role of political entrepreneurs in shaping, changing, and consolidating political institutions.6 We should also note that although there are distinct elements in these approaches, much of the existing research incorporates a mixture of public choice, Kirznerian entrepreneurship, and new institutionalism, as well as the work of other social scientists such as Friedrich Hayek and Joseph Schumpeter. The purpose of this paper is not to critique these approaches, although we shall make some remarks in passing. What matters for us is that while there are important findings in the abovementioned literatures, they tend to address only the practical manifestations of political behavior, and focus almost entirely on exploring the various methods by which politicians redistribute wealth to favored interest groups. Thus, “political entrepreneurship” is usually a metaphor for rent-seeking, and is used to explain how, in practice, politicians and political beneficiaries go about acquiring income through the perception and exploitation of rent-seeking opportunities. What is more, this literature (especially that based on the work of Professor Kirzner) tends to focus on other metaphoric aspects of political behavior as well, such as alertness and discovery, to the neglect of more concrete economic matters, such as ownership, uncertainty, and production. The concept of political entrepreneurship need not be a metaphor, however. In the theory of political entrepreneurship, relatively little attention has been paid to the entrepreneurial theory begun by Richard Cantillon [25] and developed by Frank Knight [26], Ludwig von Mises [27] and others,7 which emphasizes ownership, decisionmaking, and uncertainty-bearing as the primary components of entrepreneurial activity. Explaining how these characteristics of entrepreneurship exist in the political realm and thus, how “political entrepreneurship” differs from “voluntary,” or “market entrepreneurship”—is the purpose of this paper. It is important to note that we are not simply looking for a novel definition of political entrepreneurship, but for a specific function within the state. And while our approach has implications for future research, we wish to emphasize that this paper is an exploratory attempt to provide a new theory of political entrepreneurship, and not the last word on the subject. Interestingly, our theory happens to coincide with the etymology of the word entrepreneur, which traditionally referred to risk-bearing agents of government production [30].