掮客與經濟涉入的政治

Abstract

本文提出一個賽局理論模型以解釋經濟涉入的策略；經濟涉入係指一國有意識地藉由擴張與另一國間的經貿合作來改變後者行為並改善雙邊政治關係。本文主要探討那些要素影響經濟涉入之表現，及這些因素之影響途徑。過往的相關文獻多聚焦於質化理論和實證分析，而形式理論則付之闕如。本文所提出之模型係針對一特定情境，亦即一國之委託人透過政治掮客輸送經濟資源予另一國公民，藉此獲得公民之政治支持。本文在Stokes 等人(2013) 提出的侍從主義模型之基礎上修改提出一基準模型，用以解釋上述以掮客為中介之經濟涉入策 略，並探討兩個延伸方向：所得不平等的影響和內生的掮客。

We propose a game-theoretic model to account for economic engagement strategies, in which a country deliberately expands the economic cooperation with another country so as to change the latter’s behavior and to improve bilateral political relations. The main questions we seek to answer are what and how different factors influence the performance of economic engagement. Related literature on economic engagement focuses mainly on qualitative theories and empirical analysis, but a formal theory has yet to be developed. Our model deals with a specific scenario where a principal from a country distributes economic resources to citizens in another country through a “political broker”, in an attempt to gain political support from the citizens. With a modification of the clientelism model from Stokes et al. (2013), we develop a baseline model for this type of broker-mediated economic engagement and provide two extensions: the effect of income inequality and endogenous brokers.