"Jawboning" or "moral suasion

Moral suasion

Moral suasion , is defined in the economic sphere as “the attempt to coerce private economic activity via governmental exhortation in directions not already defined or dictated by existing...

" in economics and politics is an unofficial technique of public and private discussions and arm-twisting, which may work by the implicit threat of future government regulation

Regulation

Regulation is administrative legislation that constitutes or constrains rights and allocates responsibilities. It can be distinguished from primary legislation on the one hand and judge-made law on the other...

. In America during the Democratic administrations of Presidents Kennedy

John F. Kennedy

John Fitzgerald "Jack" Kennedy , often referred to by his initials JFK, was the 35th President of the United States, serving from 1961 until his assassination in 1963....

 and Johnson

Lyndon B. Johnson

Lyndon Baines Johnson , often referred to as LBJ, was the 36th President of the United States after his service as the 37th Vice President of the United States...

 officials tried to deal with the mounting inflationary pressures by direct government influence or jawboning. Wage-price guideposts were established, and the power of the presidency was used to push businesses and labor into going along with these guideposts. The term attracted some derision and is often associated with the Biblical story, in Judges 15:15, of Samson

Samson

Samson, Shimshon ; Shamshoun or Sampson is the third to last of the Judges of the ancient Israelites mentioned in the Tanakh ....

 slaying a thousand of his enemies using the jawbone of an ass. Alfred E. Kahn

Alfred E. Kahn

Alfred Edward Kahn was an American professor, an expert in regulation and deregulation, and an important influence in the deregulation of the airline and energy industries...

, an economic advisor to President Carter

Jimmy Carter

James Earl "Jimmy" Carter, Jr. is an American politician who served as the 39th President of the United States and was the recipient of the 2002 Nobel Peace Prize, the only U.S. President to have received the Prize after leaving office...

, was particularly known for his dislike of the method.

The term jawboning has also been used to refer to Herbert Hoover

Herbert Hoover

Herbert Clark Hoover was the 31st President of the United States . Hoover was originally a professional mining engineer and author. As the United States Secretary of Commerce in the 1920s under Presidents Warren Harding and Calvin Coolidge, he promoted partnerships between government and business...

's efforts to convince employers to keep wages high as prices fell during the Great Depression

Great Depression

The Great Depression was a severe worldwide economic depression in the decade preceding World War II. The timing of the Great Depression varied across nations, but in most countries it started in about 1929 and lasted until the late 1930s or early 1940s...

. While Hoover was successful in obtaining such agreements, they did little to alleviate unemployment. The term has been used more recently in other contexts. During the 2000 U.S. Presidential Election, George W. Bush

George W. Bush

George Walker Bush is an American politician who served as the 43rd President of the United States, from 2001 to 2009. Before that, he was the 46th Governor of Texas, having served from 1995 to 2000....

 criticized outgoing president Bill Clinton

Bill Clinton

William Jefferson "Bill" Clinton is an American politician who served as the 42nd President of the United States from 1993 to 2001. Inaugurated at age 46, he was the third-youngest president. He took office at the end of the Cold War, and was the first president of the baby boomer generation...

 for not attempting to lower oil prices by "jawboning OPEC

OPEC

OPEC is an intergovernmental organization of twelve developing countries made up of Algeria, Angola, Ecuador, Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Libya, Nigeria, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Venezuela. OPEC has maintained its headquarters in Vienna since 1965, and hosts regular meetings...

" to increase supply.

The Canadian-American economist J. K. Galbraith

John Kenneth Galbraith

John Kenneth "Ken" Galbraith , OC was a Canadian-American economist. He was a Keynesian and an institutionalist, a leading proponent of 20th-century American liberalism...

stated that "jawboning" was first used to describe the activities of the U.S. Office of Price Administration and Civilian Supply, formed in April 1941.

Examples of usage

• 1979 Solutions to Inflation, by David C. Colander, has section heading "Wage-Price Controls, Guidelines, Guideposts, Jawboning and such" (p. 105).
• 1999 (Dec) George W Bush, in the first Republican primary debate, said President Clinton “must jawbone OPEC members to lower prices.”
• 2003 Global Climate Change: The Science, Economics and Politics, by James M. Griffin, pp. 86–87 discusses effect of government jawboning to reduce the consumption of fossil fuels.
• 2004 (May 19) New York Times "Mr. McAuliffe, Mr. Vilsack and Mr. Kerry each cited a comment Mr. Bush made in 2000 while campaigning in New Hampshire, when he said that as president, he would jawbone leaders from Saudi Arabia and other oil-producing nations to pressure them to expand oil production. Well, I haven't seen any jawboning, have you? Mr. Kerry asked the crowd here."
• 2010 Barack Obama pressures British Petroleum to set up an independently-managed $20B damage compensation fund.