This book makes a rational and eloquent case for the closer integration of ethics and economics. It expands upon themes concerned with esteem, self-esteem, emotional bonding between agents, expressive concerns, and moral requirements. Economists have long assumed that 'value' and 'price' are synonymous and interchangeable. The authors show how disregarding this false assumption and adopting an interdisciplinary approach could improve the economics profession by distinguishing economic values from ethical values. Replete with discussions that will challenge conventional economics, this book offers a corrective argument against the rigid separation of agents' motivation and the purely normative aspects of economic analysis. The various contributions explore the different dimensions at the frontier between the rational and the moral in political economy, ethics and philosophy. Containing a variety of cross-border analyses, this innovative book will be a must-read for economists, political scientists and philosophers. It will also be an invaluable resource for students in the fields of economics and philosophy.

This Festschrift was "presented" in electronic form to Buchanan on the occasion of his eightieth birthday on October 3, 1999, after dinner in Fairfax, Virginia. As one might have expected, the response to our call for papers was vo luminous. In looking over the many contributions, we felt that a "published" Festschrift was also possible and fitting for the eightieth birthday of so prodi gious and influential a scholar as Professor Buchanan. To that end we have assembled the following volume. In selecting the papers to be included here we have basically tried to choose those papers which in some way bear on Buchanan's contributions. Perfectly good papers about issues not related to Buchanan's research agenda or not referring directly to Buchanan's work were not included. Space constraints did not allow universal coverage, so choices had to be made. It should be stated clearly that these were our choices based on the criterion that the contribution be relevant to Buchanan's work. Buchanan had nothing whatsoever to do with the selection of papers for this volume. Once choices had been made, we arranged the papers by subject matter ranging from various aspects of Buchanan's work in economics, political science, philosophy, and related areas, to some more personal recollections of Jim as a professor, friend, and colleague. Including the latter material was also our decision, and this probably represents a choice with which Jim would not have agreed. We think, however, that the reader will find these pieces interesting and informative."

What is the relation between economics and religion? In particular, are theology and economics entirely autonomous and distinct areas of inquiry? Economics and Religion: Are They Distinct? takes an inductive approach using case studies to shed light on the extent to which economics may be regarded as independent of the religious beliefs of its practitioners. The case studies comprise the first part of the book and are listed chronologically. These case studies are followed by commentaries, or interpretive essays; the authors of these commentaries are acting as a jury to consider the question `How sensitive is economics to theological considerations?' The editors provide a concluding chapter summarizing both the evidence and the findings.

Societies function on the basis of rules. These rules, rather like the rules of the road, coordinate the activities of individuals who have a variety of goals and purposes. Whether the rules work well or ill, and how they can be made to work better, is a matter of major concern. Appropriately interpreted, the working of social rules is also the central subject matter of modern political economy. This book is about rules - what they are, how they work, and how they can be properly analysed. The authors' objective is to understand the workings of alternative political institutions so that choices among such institutions (rules) can be more fully informed. Thus, broadly defined, the methodology of constitutional political economy is the subject matter of The Reason of Rules. The authors have examined how rules for political order work, how such rules might be chosen, and how normative criteria for such choices might be established.

Should government's power to tax be limited? The events of the late 1970s in the wake of California's Proposition 13 brought this question very sharply into popular focus. Whether the power to tax should be restricted, and if so how, are issues of immediate policy significance. Providing a serious analysis of these issues, the authors of this 1980 book offer an approach to the understanding and evaluation of the fiscal system, one that yields profound implications. The central question becomes: how much 'power to tax' would the citizen voluntarily grant to government as a party to some initial social contract devising a fiscal constitution? Those in office are assumed to exploit the power assigned to them to the maximum possible extent: government is modelled as 'revenue-maximizing Leviathan'. Armed with such a model, the authors proceed to trace out the restrictions on the power to tax that might be expected to emerge from the citizen's constitutional deliberations.

As the concluding volume in the series, this book is structurally and qualitatively different from those preceding. Eight leading social scientists have written major essays on key elements of Australian institutional life. Each chapter contributes significantly by providing an overview of regional and international scholarly interest.

This book offers an account of key features of modern representative democracy. Working from the rational actor tradition, it builds a middle ground between orthodox political theory and the economic analysis of politics. Standard economic models of politics emphasise the design of the institutional devices of democracy as operated by essentially self-interested individuals. This book departs from that model by focusing on democratic desires alongside democratic devices, stressing that important aspects of democracy depend on the motivation of democrats and the interplay between devices and desires. Individuals are taken to be not only rational, but also somewhat moral. The authors argue that this approach provides access to aspects of the debate on democratic institutions that are beyond the narrowly economic model. They apply their analysis to voting, elections, representation, political departments and the separation and division of powers, providing a wide-ranging discussion of the design of democratic institutions.

Do voters in large scale democracies reliably vote for the electoral outcomes most in their own interest? Much of the literature on voting predicts that they do, but this book argues that fully rational voters will not, in fact, consistently vote for the political outcomes they prefer. The authors critique the dominant interest-based theory of voting and offer a competing theory, which they term an "expressive" theory of electoral politics. This theory is shown to be more coherent and more consistent with actually observed voting behavior. In particular, the theory does a better job of explaining the propensity of democratic regimes to make war, the predominance of moral questions on democratic regimes to make war, the predominance of moral questions on democratic political agendas, and the distribution of government resources in democratic systems. This important book offers a compelling challenge to the central premises of the prevailing theories of voting behavior and should serve as the basis for fundamental reevaluation in the field.

This book contains a range of essays on topics in the emerging field of "constitutional political economy". This field of enquiry is strongly associated with the name of James M. Buchanan whose research program has been the point of departure for this field. The essays are a selection of those written by colleagues and researchers in the field to honor Buchanan on the occasion of his 80th birthday. They cover a wide range of topics but fall primarily into two sets: one set dealing with methodological aspects of the c.p.e. approach; the other dealing with specific applications in a variety of policy areas, ranging from "economic transformation" to monetary policy regimes to health care. One particular issue in the methodological area relates to the model of motivation used - and more especially, the role of "morality" in economic and political behavior. The five essays on this topic make up one of the sections of the book, and justify reference to the issue in the volume's title.

Do voters in large scale democracies reliably vote for the electoral outcomes most in their own interest? Much of the literature on voting predicts that they do, but this book argues that fully rational voters will not, in fact, consistently vote for the political outcomes they prefer. The authors critique the dominant interest-based theory of voting and offer a competing theory, which they term an "expressive" theory of electoral politics. This theory is shown to be more coherent and more consistent with actually observed voting behavior. In particular, the theory does a better job of explaining the propensity of democratic regimes to make war, the predominance of moral questions on democratic regimes to make war, the predominance of moral questions on democratic political agendas, and the distribution of government resources in democratic systems. This important book offers a compelling challenge to the central premises of the prevailing theories of voting behavior and should serve as the basis for fundamental reevaluation in the field.

What is the relation between economics and religion? In particular, are theology and economics entirely autonomous and distinct areas of inquiry? Economics and Religion: Are They Distinct? takes an inductive approach using case studies to shed light on the extent to which economics may be regarded as independent of the religious beliefs of its practitioners. The case studies comprise the first part of the book and are listed chronologically. These case studies are followed by commentaries, or interpretive essays; the authors of these commentaries are acting as a jury to consider the question How sensitive is economics to theological considerations?' The editors provide a concluding chapter summarizing both the evidence and the findings.

Should government's power to tax be limited? The events of the late 1970s in the wake of California's Proposition 13 brought this question very sharply into popular focus. Whether the power to tax should be restricted, and if so how, are issues of immediate policy significance. Providing a serious analysis of these issues, the authors of this 1980 book offer an approach to the understanding and evaluation of the fiscal system, one that yields profound implications. The central question becomes: how much 'power to tax' would the citizen voluntarily grant to government as a party to some initial social contract devising a fiscal constitution? Those in office are assumed to exploit the power assigned to them to the maximum possible extent: government is modelled as 'revenue-maximizing Leviathan'. Armed with such a model, the authors proceed to trace out the restrictions on the power to tax that might be expected to emerge from the citizen's constitutional deliberations.

This book offers a novel approach to the analysis of democracy, and an application of that approach to a variety of democratic institutions, including elections, representation, political parties and the separation of powers. Standard economic approaches to politics concentrate on the design of institutions and the role of individuals motivated by self-interest. The authors incorporate a broader view of political motivation, assuming individuals are moral as well as rational, and provide a wide-ranging discussion of the design of democratic institutions.

Norms are a pervasive yet mysterious feature of social life. In Explaining Norms, four philosophers and social scientists team up to grapple with some of the many mysteries, offering a comprehensive account of norms: what they are; how and why they emerge, persist and change; and how they work. Norms, they argue, should be understood in non-reductive terms as clusters of normative attitudes that serve the function of making us accountable to one another--with the different kinds of norms (legal, moral, and social norms) differing in virtue of being constituted by different kinds of normative attitudes that serve to make us accountable in different ways. Explanations of and by norms should be seen as thoroughly pluralist in character. Explanations of norms should appeal to the ways that norms help us to pursue projects and goals, individually and collectively, as well as to enable us to constitute social meanings. Explanations by norms should recognise the multiplicity of ways in which norms may bear upon the actions we perform, the attitudes we form and the modes of deliberation in which we engage: following, merely conforming with, and even breaching norms. While advancing novel and distinctive positions on all of these topics, Explaining Norms will also serve as a sourcebook with a rich array of arguments and illustrations for others to reassemble in ways of their own choosing.

During a career spanning over thirty years Philip Pettit has made seminal contributions in moral philosophy, political philosophy, philosophy of the social sciences, philosophy of mind and action, and metaphysics. His many contributions would be remarkable enough in themselves, but they are made all the more remarkable by the ways in which Pettit connects them with each other. Pettit holds that the lessons learned when thinking about problems in one area of philosophy often constitute ready-made solutions to problems we faced in completely different areas. His body of work taken as a whole provides a vivid example of what philosophy looks like when done with that conviction.
Common Minds presents specially written papers by some of the most eminent philosophers alive today, grappling with some of the themes derived from the larger program that Pettit has inspired. How are we to do the best we can, whether in the domain of morality or politics, given that we are non-ideal agents acting in non-ideal circumstances? What is the normative significance of the capacity we have to engage in rational deliberation, both individually and collectively, about what to do? How are we to square our conception of ourselves as rational deliberators with the more mechanistic conception of ourselves and the world we inhabit that we get from the natural sciences? The volume concludes with a substantial piece by Pettit in which he gives an overview of his work, draws out the connections between its key themes, and provides a rich commentary on the preceding essays.

However much people want esteem, it is an untradable commodity- there is no way that you can buy the good opinion of another or sell to others your good opinion of them. And yet esteem is allocated in society according to systematic determinants: people's performance, publicity, and presentation relative to others will help to fix how much esteem they enjoy and how much disesteem they avoid. In turn, rational individuals are bound to compete with one another, however tacitly, in the attempt to increase their chances of winning esteem and avoiding disesteem. And this competition shapes the environments in which they each pursue esteem, setting relevant comparators and benchmarks, and determining the cost that a person must bear for obtaining a given level of esteem. Hidden in the multifarious interactions and exchanges of social life, then, there is a quiet force at work - a force as silent and powerful as gravity - which molds the basic form of people's relationships and associations. This force was more or less routinely invoked in the writings of classical theorists like Aristotle and Plato, Locke and Montesquieu, Mandeville and Hume and Madison. Although Adam Smith himself gave it great credence, however, the rise of economics proper coincided with a sudden decline in the attention devoted to the economy of esteem. What had been a topic of compelling interest for earlier authors fell into relative neglect throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. This book is designed to reverse the trend. It begins by outlining the psychology of esteem and the way the working of that psychology can give rise to an economy. It then shows how a variety of social patterns that are otherwise anomalous come to make a lot of sense within an economics of esteem. And it looks, finally, at the ways in which the economy of esteem may be reshaped to improve overall social outcomes. While making connections with older patterns of social theorising, it offers a novel orientation for contemporary thought about how society works and how it may be made to work. It puts the economy of esteem firmly on the agenda of economics and social science and of moral and political theory.