The Methodological Potential of the Political Markets Theory and Its Use in Research on Economic Globalization

Abstract

The article is aimed at covering the methodological possibilities of the theory of political markets for making research of the current macroeconomic policy. The theory of political markets in the contemporary conditions is one of the most effective methodological instruments for researching the mechanisms of macroeconomic policy implementation both within terms of individual countries and in the field of international economic relations. Analyzing, systematizing and generalizing the scientific works of many scholars, the authors combined the analysis of officially declared procedures for making relevant political decisions with real informal mechanisms for the implementation of rent-oriented behavior of any of the political entities – both personified and those who «hide» behind the relevant groups of influence, which are created specially to conceal such personal influence. As a result of the research, two directions of application of the theory of political markets are allocated to study the peculiarities of the regulatory economic activity of the modern State. First, it is an analysis of the interaction of the main internal political actors – participants in the struggle for redistribution of public goods: politicians (whose powers depend on the results of elections); officials (whose powers depend on their appointment to office); voters (who «sell» their votes in exchange for favorable further decisions of politicians) and organized pressure groups (lobbyists). Secondly, it is a study of the regulatory role of the national State in international economic relations. A perspective direction of further scientific research in this plane is the development of a theoretical and methodological instrumentarium for quantitative assessment of the scale of redistribution and the size of losses of social welfare on the basis of the economic-statistical and expert assessments

Keywords

• political markets
• globalization
• methodology
• institutions