Exit, Voice, and Loyalty was influenced by all of these inputs: Hirschman’s misjudgment in Nigeria; Moscovici’s analysis of the power of small groups that speak loudly; and Nader and the consumer movement. The book is like a road map through the intricacies of disappointment. What to do when your government stops listening, your car dealer sells you lemons, or the local public school cuts after-school music to save some money? For Hirschman, there were three options. One was exit. You could leave your country. (Hirschman was familiar with this option. He had fled tyranny, war, and intolerance on many occasions, starting in the spring of 1933, when he fled the Nazi takeover in Germany at age 17.) You could give up on Chevy and buy a Ford. You could withdraw from the public school and opt for a private one. In our day, examples of exit include General Mattis’s resignation from Trump’s cabinet, the decision by the majority of Britons to part ways with the European Union, and the flight of 70 million refugees worldwide from persecution and obscene neglect.
Another option was voice: expressing anger in a letter to the editor or making a complaint to the sales rep or, as many of the students at Stanford were doing the year Hirschman was in residence, protesting the Vietnam War. When demonstrators clashed in the streets of Paris and outside the Democratic Party convention in Chicago in 1968, or marched on Washington in the summer of 1963 to push for equal rights for African Americans, they exercised what Hirschman called voice: proclaiming one’s discontent loudly and publicly, in the hope that rulers got the message and changed their ways. In our day, we see voice when citizens hang a banner over a police station in Seattle declaring, “This Space Is Now Property of the Seattle People,” or pressure the governor of New York to make public the records of abusive police officers, or take to the streets of Beirut to denounce a corrupt and kleptocratic regime.
There was a third option: stay loyal. Hirschman didn’t think too much about loyalty. It wasn’t really an active option, more like a default setting. To this day, it remains the weakest conceptual leg of his famous tripod.
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Hirschman also noted that deaf and overgrown institutions were vulnerable to “laziness, flabbiness, and decay.” He contended that small and medium-size countries were more inclined to adapt and reform to keep exit-tempted citizens at home. The Dutch Republic had to pay attention to its citizens in early modern Europe or risk losing its painters and patricians. Bigger powers with more resources could afford to tune out for longer, but the consequences were never too far behind. Just look to France, where pent-up grievances eventually exploded in revolution.
People with choices can wield stronger voices. What prevents institutions from going the French route is their ability to listen, their tolerance or support for voice, and, ultimately, the fact that they cannot close off the exits. Exit, Voice, and Loyalty can be read as a case against monopoly, with the goal of not only protecting consumers—as Nader proclaimed—but keeping ruling institutions responsive.
- More Here. Hirschman is one of my favorite people and his book Exit, Voice, and Loyalty: Responses to Decline in Firms, Organizations, and States has timeless insights.
Another option was voice: expressing anger in a letter to the editor or making a complaint to the sales rep or, as many of the students at Stanford were doing the year Hirschman was in residence, protesting the Vietnam War. When demonstrators clashed in the streets of Paris and outside the Democratic Party convention in Chicago in 1968, or marched on Washington in the summer of 1963 to push for equal rights for African Americans, they exercised what Hirschman called voice: proclaiming one’s discontent loudly and publicly, in the hope that rulers got the message and changed their ways. In our day, we see voice when citizens hang a banner over a police station in Seattle declaring, “This Space Is Now Property of the Seattle People,” or pressure the governor of New York to make public the records of abusive police officers, or take to the streets of Beirut to denounce a corrupt and kleptocratic regime.
There was a third option: stay loyal. Hirschman didn’t think too much about loyalty. It wasn’t really an active option, more like a default setting. To this day, it remains the weakest conceptual leg of his famous tripod.
[---]
Hirschman also noted that deaf and overgrown institutions were vulnerable to “laziness, flabbiness, and decay.” He contended that small and medium-size countries were more inclined to adapt and reform to keep exit-tempted citizens at home. The Dutch Republic had to pay attention to its citizens in early modern Europe or risk losing its painters and patricians. Bigger powers with more resources could afford to tune out for longer, but the consequences were never too far behind. Just look to France, where pent-up grievances eventually exploded in revolution.
People with choices can wield stronger voices. What prevents institutions from going the French route is their ability to listen, their tolerance or support for voice, and, ultimately, the fact that they cannot close off the exits. Exit, Voice, and Loyalty can be read as a case against monopoly, with the goal of not only protecting consumers—as Nader proclaimed—but keeping ruling institutions responsive.
- More Here. Hirschman is one of my favorite people and his book Exit, Voice, and Loyalty: Responses to Decline in Firms, Organizations, and States has timeless insights.
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