Exit, Voice, and Loyalty

Responses to Decline in Firms, Organizations, and States

Albert O. Hirschman

    1. Introduction and Doctrinal Background

    Enter "exit" and "voice"

    Latitude for deterioration, and slack in economic thought

    Exit and voice as impersonations of economics and politics

    2. Exit

    How the exit option works

    Competition as collusive behavior

    3. Voice

    Voice as a residual of exit

    Voice as an alternative to exit

    4. A Special Difficulty in Combining Exit and Voice

    5. How Monopoly Can be Comforted by Competition

    6. On Spatial Duopoly and the Dynamics of Two-Party Systems

    7. A Theory of Loyalty

    The activation of voice as a function of loyalty

    Loyalist behavior as modified by severe initiation and high penalties for exit

    Loyalty and the difficult exit from public goods (and evils)

    8. Exit and Voice in American Ideology and Practice

    9. The Elusive Optimal Mix of Exit and Voice

    Appendixes

    A. A simple diagrammatic representation of voice and exit

    B. The choice between voice and exit

    C. The reversal phenomenon

    D. Consumer reactions to price rise and quality decline in the case of several connoisseur goods

    F. The effects of severity of initiation on activism: design for an experiment (in collaboration with Philip G. Zimbardo and Mark Snyder)

    Index

  • Cover: Exit, Voice, and Loyalty

Albert O. Hirschman is Professor of Social Science, Emeritus, at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, following a career of prestigious appointments, honors, and awards. Perhaps the most widely known and admired of his many books are Exit, Voice, and Loyalty (Harvard) and The Passions and the Interests (Princeton).