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More on Joining Interest Groups

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 January 2009

David Marsh
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Extract

Shackleton's comment on my earlier article seems to me to raise a number of interesting questions. He is very critical of my methodology and suggests alternative ways of testing Olson's model. He places most emphasis on the need to consider aggregate data on the changing patterns of interest group membership over time. In this short note I do not intend to reply at length to Shackleton's criticisms. Instead, I shall re-examine Olson's analysis using aggregate data on the changing patterns of CBI membership in the last decade.

Type
Notes and Comments
Information
British Journal of Political Science , Volume 8 , Issue 3 , July 1978 , pp. 380 - 384
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1978

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References

1 I do not have space here to look at the CBI's precedessors, but Olson's analysis is applied to this period in Grant, W. and Marsh, D., The Confederation of British Industry (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1977).Google Scholar

2 Shackleton, J. R.. ‘Dr Marsh on Olson: A Comment’, this Journal, p. 377Google Scholar, fn. 7. It is informative to quote Olson on this point: ‘The cost of voting and signing petitions is thus insignificant and imperceptible to many people… The point is that there is a “threshold” above which costs and returns influence a person's action, and below which they do not.’ Olson, M. Jr., The Logic of Collective Action (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1971), p. 164.Google Scholar

3 Marsh, D., ‘On Joining Interest Groups: An Empirical Consideration of the Work of M. Olson Jr.’, British Journal of Political Science, VI (1976), pp. 266–8.Google Scholar

4 Marsh, , ‘On Joining Interest Groups’, pp. 268–9.Google Scholar

5 Shackleton, , ‘Dr Marsh on Olson’, p. 378.Google Scholar

6 Barry, Brian, Sociologists, Economists and Democracy (London: Collier-Macmillan, 1970), P. 33.Google Scholar

7 Actually Friedman's views on appropriate methodology are strongly criticized by economists. See, for example, Coddington, A., ‘Positive Economies’, Canadian Journal of Economics, V (1972), 1–15.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

8 P. 379.

9 See Grant, and Marsh, , The Confederation of British Industry, pp. 156–68Google Scholar, for a detailed discussion of the 1972 Industry Act.

10 See Grant, and Marsh, , The Confederation of British Industry, pp. 191–7Google Scholar, for a detailed discussion of the CBI's attempts to influence prices and incomes policy.

11 From transcripts supplied by the CBI.

12 Birmingham Post, 28 02 1974.Google Scholar

13 Birmingham Post, 28 02 1974.Google Scholar