----------------- HES POSTING ----------------- Greetings, I have recently focused my studies on Albert O. Hirshman's "exit-voice" framework. Some political scientists ( such writers as Brian Barry, A. H. Birch, and Michael Laver) hold that his contribution falls broadly within the sphere of the economic approach to the study of society, thereby concluding that the "exit-voice" theory belongs to the imperialist phase of economics which has begun since the end of the 1950s. On the other hand, Hirshman himself writes: I don't "use the tools of one discipline for the purpose of annexing another." ( _Exit, Voice, and Loyalty_ Preface) or "as most economists who have made contributions to political science in recent decades, I have occasionally used economic models and modes of reasoning to dissect political phenomena....[but] only a small part of my work has been of this particular kind. In fact, in much of _Exit, Voice, and Loyalty_ I have been guilty, not of imperialist ambition or design, but rather of the opposite: namely, of the desire to convince economists of the importance and usefulness, for the analysis of economic phenemena, of an essentially political concept such as voice." ( _Essays in Trespassing_ pp. 213-214) A question I would like to pose in HES mailing list is that whether one can consider " exit-voice" theory an economic approach which belongs to imperialist phase of economics in the second half of the twentieth century or not. Mohammad Maljoo ------------ FOOTER TO HES POSTING ------------ For information, send the message "info HES" to [log in to unmask]