赫希曼提出了一个重要的政治经济学问题：人们为什么有时候会积极参与像游行、示威、罢工这些公共活动，而有时候却把更多时间投入到私人事务中？赫希曼发现了这个在私人参与和公共参与之间的循环，即人们有时候会将几乎全部时间投入到私人事务中，有时候会拿出较多时间参与公共事务，并重点对原因加以解释。他给出了一个看上去简单，但却非常重要的解释：失望。赫希曼通过引入失望概念解释了私人一公共一私人的循环。 目录 艾伯特·O.赫希曼和《转变参与——私人利益与公共行动》 序言：关于艾伯特·O.赫希曼《转变参与——私人利益与公共行动》出版20周年 前言 引言：私人公共循环 第一章 论失望 失望在偏好变化中的作用 严肃对待失望 第二章 消费者失望的各种类型 真正日用品的特权地位 耐用消费品 服务 第三章 对新增财富的通常敌视 来自18世纪英国和法国的历史证据 反对新产品的多方面案例 第四章 从私人关注转向公共舞台（一） 对消费者失望的退出和呼吁反应 解释生活风格的变化：意识形态和二阶意志 第五章 从私人关注转向公共舞台（二） 集体行动和回应 为什么搭便车遭到唾弃？ 第六章 参与公共生活的挫折（一） 我们想象力的贫乏 过度承担义务与沉溺 第七章 参与公共生活的挫折（二） 投票的参与不足 有关普选权起源的历史离题 第八章 私有化 腐败 暴露出来的公众德行 私人领域的吸引力 结论 术语与人名对照表 序言 我不太确信这部著作是否有资格成为社会科学的著作。它是如此直接地关注变迁与剧变，关注个人与社会，以至于我有时候会产生这样一种感觉：我在写一部教育小说（Bildungsroman）的概念性框架（就像通常在小说中看到的，许多自传性的文字混杂各处）。 派别的这种模糊不清没有妨碍我，但它确实需要付出代价。我已经尽力进行不同的转向和转型，这些都尽可能被体现在本书中。但是坦率地说，它们缺乏肯定，并且不能够实现一般性，而这一点是社会科学在提出假说时所要求的。就像许多这类要求被证明是多余的一样，我很可能也无需担心。 在任何情况下，这种冒险都并非完全依赖于我整个研究计划的成功。我将要进行的整个研究进程允许对由其产生的各方面进行精细探索，这包括许多其他的观察、对传统消费理论的批评、对集体行动的更好理解以及对普选权的新解释。在我获得这些副产品的同时，我的信心因整个冒险得以调整而提高了，而这仅仅是因为其明显的启发价值。

An innovator in contemporary thought on economic and political development looks here at decline rather than growth. Albert O. Hirschman makes a basic distinction between alternative ways of reacting to deterioration in business firms and, in general, to dissatisfaction with organizations: one, "exit," is for the member to quit the organization or for the customer to switch to the competing product, and the other, "voice," is for members or customers to agitate and exert influence for change "from within." The efficiency of the competitive mechanism, with its total reliance on exit, is questioned for certain important situations. As exit often undercuts voice while being unable to counteract decline, loyalty is seen in the function of retarding exit and of permitting voice to play its proper role. The interplay of the three concepts turns out to illuminate a wide range of economic, social, and political phenomena. As the author states in the preface, "having found my own unifying way of looking at issues as diverse as competition and the two-party system, divorce and the American character, black power and the failure of 'unhappy' top officials to resign over Vietnam, I decided to let myself go a little."

In this volume, Albert Hirschman reconstructs the intellectual climate of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries to illuminate the intricate ideological transformation that occurred, wherein the pursuit of material interests - so long condemned as the deadly sin of avarice - was assigned the role of containing the unruly and destructive passions of man. Hirschman here offers a new interpretation for the rise of capitalism, one that emphasizes the continuities between old and new, in contrast to the assumption of a sharp break that is a common feature of both Marxian and Weberian thinking. Among the insights presented here is the ironical finding that capitalism was originally supposed to accomplish exactly what was soon denounced as its worst feature: the repression of the passions in favor of the 'harmless,' if one-dimensional, interests of commercial life. To portray this lengthy ideological change as an endogenous process, Hirschman draws on the writings of a large number of thinkers, including Montesquieu, Sir James Steuart, and Adam Smith.