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Nobel Laureate James Buchanan collects in this volume original and
recent hard-to-find essays exploring liberalism and conservatism as
distinct ways of looking at and thinking about the realm of human
interaction. Classical liberalism is presented here as a coherent
political and economic position, as distinguished from both modern
liberalism and conservatism. The book comprises chapters which,
taken together, assign a central and critical role to individual
liberty. The liberalism is classical in its continuation of
normative arguments made by the great liberal thinkers of three
centuries, including the American Founders and culminating in the
recent works of F.A. Hayek and Milton Friedman. The author
discusses the status quo in the conservative position, normative
presuppositions for democracy, and examines what seem to be the
conservative assumptions about the nature of human beings. The
introductory and concluding chapters, written specifically for this
volume, are designed to place both the essays and his own position
in the broader perspective of political philosophy. Students and
scholars of economics, political science and philosophy will find
this collection a provocative and necessary addition to their
library. Liberals and conservatives alike will find the arguments
insightful and absorbing.
Inspired by F.A. Hayek's Individualism and Economic Order, this
book, edited by Yong Yoon, stands in contrast to the themes of that
work by emphasizing that collective action operates differently
from the way the market works. The chapters comprise papers written
by James M. Buchanan, both with and without Yoon's co-authorship,
after the publication of his Collected Works. In this book, the
authors analyze political disorder that is caused by individualism
and self-interest in democracy, focusing specifically on the
American political commons. Buchanan and Yoon expertly examine a
variety of topics within this theme: the public choice approach to
political disorder, rigorous economic models, the dysfunction of
American fiscal institutions, the psychological aspects of
political rules, and Fukuyama's vetocracy as a case of
anti-commons. Readers will gain many new insights from
Individualism and Political Disorder, and it will prove invaluable
for academics and students in an array of areas, such as economics,
politics, public policy and public administration, social
psychology, and law and economics.
This book presents a critical assessment of the political and
social order in the post-revolutionary decade of the 1990s in both
the transitional economies and Western welfare states confronting
fiscal crises. As we enter the new post-socialist century, James M.
Buchanan argues that we need to think and act on the premise that
the future is uncertain. James M. Buchanan examines the political
economy of the post-socialist era, analysing the events of 1989-91
and some of their predicted consequences. In addition he reflects
upon the influence of those revolutionary years and the reactions
to the changes, as well as the role of economists in the new
socio-political environment. The political economy of the
post-socialist era will be determined by the forces of historical
development, social and cultural evolution, directed political
change and exogenous shocks. To a large extent, many of these
forces cannot be planned for, except directed political change.
This insightful new book will be welcomed by political economists,
legal and political philosophers, political scientists and public
choice economists.
James Buchanan has been a key figure in the integration of the
analysis of political decision-making into the corpus of economic
theory, the source for what is now called 'public choice
economics'. This notable volume seeks to identify for future
generations the landmark contributions to this area made in the
twentieth century.
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Calculus of Consent (Paperback)
James M. Buchanan, Gordon Tullock, Charles Kershaw Rowle
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R355
R323
Discovery Miles 3 230
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This is the second volume of Liberty Fund's "The Selected Works of
Gordon Tullock", it is a reprint edition of the ground-breaking
economic classic written by two of the world's preeminent
economists -- Gordon Tullock and Nobel Laureate James M. Buchanan.
This book is a unique blend of economics and political science that
helped create significant new subfields in each discipline
respectively, namely, the public choice school and constitutional
political economy. Charles K. Rowley, Duncan Black Professor of
Economics at George Mason University, points out in his
introduction, "The Calculus of Consent" is, by a wide margin, the
most widely cited publication of each coauthor and, by general
agreement, their most important scientific contribution." The book
is divided into four parts, each consisting of several chapters.
The introduction by Professor Rowley provides a short overview of
the book and identifies key insights that permeated the bounds of
economics and political science and created an enduring nexus
between the two sciences. Part I establishes the conceptual
framework of the book's subject; part II defines the realm of
social choice; part III applies the logic developed in part II to
describe a range of decision-making rules, most notably, the rule
of simple majority; while part IV explores the economics and ethics
of democracy.
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.
The very logic of majority rule implies unequal treatment or
discrimination. If left unconstrained, majority coalitions will
promote the interests of their own members at the expense of other
persons. This book focuses on the effects of applying a generality
constraint on the political process. Under this requirement,
majorities would be constitutionally prohibited from treating
different persons and groups differently. The generality principle
is familiar in that all persons are to be treated equally. In
summary, this book extends the generality norm to politics. Several
defences of equal treatment or generality are developed and
applied. These include the familiar intuition that invokes
fairness. But the primary argument here is centred on political
efficiency, which is increased when governments are constrained to
treat persons or groups generally rather than differentially. The
political efficiency defence of the generality constraint is based
on a public choice analysis of the implication of majoritarian
discrimination.
This volume contains the papers, along with the discussant's re
marks, presented at a conference on 'Federal Fiscal
Responsibility', held at The Homestead, Hot Springs, Virginia, on
26-27 March 1976. Additionally, we, the editors, have included an
introductory essay which sets forth some of our background thoughts
that in formed our organization of the conference and which also de
scribes some of our reactions to the conference. This conference
was sponsored by the Liberty Fund, Inc. of Indianapolis, Indiana,
which incorporated this conference into its overall program
directed toward the study of the ideals of a free society of
responsible individuals. Related to this effort, the Liberty Fund
also assisted in supporting research on Democracy in Deficit: The
Political Legacy of Lord Keynes, by James M. Buchanan and Richard
E. Wagner (New York: Academic Press, 1977). Both Democracy in
Deficit and the conference were de signed to examine one important
aspect of the Liberty Fund's general set of concerns, namely the'
way in which political con siderations influence the macroeconomic
aspects of budgetary policy, thereby, in turn, influencing the
future of American liberty and prosperity. We are most grateful to
the Liberty Fund for their efforts, and we are pleased that Enid
Goodrich, William Fletcher, Neil McLeod, and Helen Schultz of the
Liberty Fund were able to attend the conference."
The very logic of majority rule implies unequal treatment or
discrimination. If left unconstrained, majority coalitions will
promote the interests of their own members at the expense of other
persons. This book focuses on the effects of applying a generality
constraint on the political process. Under this requirement,
majorities would be constitutionally prohibited from treating
different persons and groups differently. The generality principle
is familiar in that all persons are to be treated equally. In
summary, this book extends the generality norm to politics. Several
defences of equal treatment or generality are developed and
applied. These include the familiar intuition that invokes
fairness. But the primary argument here is centred on political
efficiency, which is increased when governments are constrained to
treat persons or groups generally rather than differentially. The
political efficiency defence of the generality constraint is based
on a public choice analysis of the implication of majoritarian
discrimination.
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.
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.
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Indexes (Hardcover)
James M. Buchanan
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R340
R308
Discovery Miles 3 080
Save R32 (9%)
|
Ships in 12 - 17 working days
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This volume presents a comprehensive index to the entire series of
"The Collected Works of James M. Buchanan." Included is an
annotated copy of the entire curriculum vitae, indicating in which
volume in the series the various items appear and, correspondingly,
those items that have been omitted.
As the editors observe, "This is a series that no serious scholar
of public choice theory, public economics, or contemporary
political theory will want to be without. It is a series that will
also appeal to the general student of liberty, for Buchanan
has--perhaps more than any other contemporary scholar--helped us to
view politics without the romantic gloss that characterizes so much
normative political theory and that slips unthinkingly into so much
popular commentary. Buchanan has been a resolute defender of 'the
ideal of a society of free and responsible individuals, ' and has
been a painstaking analyst of the institutional structure that
might best support such a society. Buchanan stands with von Mises,
Hayek, Popper, and Friedman as one of the great twentieth-century
scholars of liberty."
The entire series includes:
Volume 1 "The Logical Foundations of Constitutional Liberty"
Volume 2 "Public Principles of Public Debt "
Volume 3 "The Calculus of Consent "
Volume 4 "Public Finance in Democratic Process"
Volume 5 "The Demand and Supply of Public Goods"
Volume 6 "Cost and Choice"
Volume 7 "The Limits of Liberty"
Volume 8 "Democracy in Deficit"
Volume 9 "The Power to Tax"
Volume 10 "The Reason of Rules"
Volume 11 "Politics by Principle, Not Interest"
Volume 12 "Economic Inquiry and Its Logic"
Volume 13 "Politics as Public Choice"
Volume 14 "Debt and Taxes"
Volume 15 "Externalities and Public Expenditure Theory"
Volume 16 "Choice, Contract, and Constitutions"
Volume 17 "Moral Science and Moral Order"
Volume 18 "Federalism, Liberty, and the Law"
Volume 19 "Ideas, Persons, and Events"
Volume 20 "Indexes"
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Indexes (Hardcover)
James M. Buchanan
|
R605
R542
Discovery Miles 5 420
Save R63 (10%)
|
Ships in 12 - 17 working days
|
This volume presents a comprehensive index to the entire series of
'The Collected Works of James M Buchanan'. Included is an annotated
copy of the entire curriculum vitae, indicating in which volume in
the series the various items appear and, correspondingly, those
items that have been omitted. As the editors observe, "This is a
series that no serious scholar of public choice theory, public
economics, or contemporary political theory will want to be
without. It is a series that will also appeal to the general
student of liberty, for Buchanan has -- perhaps more than any other
contemporary scholar -- helped us to view politics without the
romantic gloss that characterises so much normative political
theory and that slips unthinkingly into so much popular commentary.
Buchanan has been a resolute defender of 'the ideal of a society of
free and responsible individuals,' and has been a painstaking
analyst of the institutional structure that might best support such
a society. Buchanan stands with von Mises, Hayek, Popper, and
Friedman as one of the great twentieth-century scholars of
liberty."
The thirty-one papers presented in this volume offer scholars and
general readers alike a comprehensive introduction to the work of
one of the greatest economists of the modern era. Many of
Buchanan's most important essays are gathered in this inaugural
volume of the twenty-volume series from Liberty Fund of his
'Collected Works'. The essays are arranged thematically and so
present a complete perspective on Buchanan's work. The six sections
include: introduction; politics without romance; public finance and
democratic process; the economist and economic order; ethics and
economics; the reason of rules. The editors have focused on papers
that Buchanan has written without collaboration and which present
Buchanan's earlier, classic statements on crucial subjects rather
than his subsequent elaborations which appear in later volumes in
the series. Included, too, is Buchanan's Nobel address, 'The
Constitution of Economic Policy', and the text of the Nobel
Committee's press release explaining why Buchanan was awarded the
prize for Economics in 1986. The volume also includes Buchanan's
autobiographical essay, 'Better Than Plowing', in which he gives
not only a brief account of his life, but also his own assessment
of what is important, distinctive, and enduring in his work. The
foreword by the three series editors will be valuable to all
readers who wish to engage the challenging but epochal writings of
the father of modern public choice theory.
"Politics by principle is that which modern politics is not. What
we observe is 'politics by interest', whether in the form of
explicitly discriminatory treatment (rewarding or punishing) of
particular groupings of citizens or of some elitist-dirigiste
classification of citizens into the deserving or non-deserving on
the basis of a presumed superior wisdom about what is really 'good'
for us all. The proper principle for politics is that of
generalization of generality." -- James M Buchanan, from the
Preface. In his foreword, Hartmut Kliemt sums up the main objective
of James M Buchanan and Roger Congleton's 'Politics by Principle':
"Imposing constitutional constraints on majoritarian politics such
that a more principled pattern might emerge must be a political aim
of high priority for all who wish for free and responsible citizens
to live together peacefully as political equals under the rule of
general laws. Buchanan and Congleton's efforts to revive the
classical liberal agenda in Politics by Principle, Not Interest are
of the greatest interest in that regard. And this interest is not
merely a theoretical one." As James Buchanan notes in introducing
his co-author Roger Congleton, 'Politics by Principle, Not
Interest' "embodies the working out and presentation of a single
idea...the extension and application of the generality principle to
majoritarian politics." After laying out the theory, Buchanan and
Congleton attempt to work it out in practical political reality.
Buchanan notes that "it is much easier to discuss the generality
principle as an abstract ideal than it is to define the precise
conditions for its satisfaction in any particular setting." Not
daunted by the difficulty of the task, the two authors succeed
brilliantly in applying the generality principle to the political
arena. They are interested not in laying down precise do's and
don'ts for politics, but in pointing out the ideal of
nondiscriminatory governance and calling for constitutional
constraints on political action so it conforms more closely to the
generality norm.
""The Limits of Liberty" is concerned mainly with two topics. One
is an attempt to construct a new contractarian theory of the state,
and the other deals with its legitimate limits. The latter is a
matter of great practical importance and is of no small
significance from the standpoint of political philosophy."--Scott
Gordon, "Journal of Political Economy"
James Buchanan offers a strikingly innovative approach to a
pervasive problem of social philosophy. The problem is one of the
classic paradoxes concerning man's freedom in society: in order to
protect individual freedom, the state must restrict each person's
right to act. Employing the techniques of modern economic analysis,
Professor Buchanan reveals the conceptual basis of an individual's
social rights by examining the evolution and development of these
rights out of presocial conditions.
"The Calculus of Consent" was co-authored by Buchanan with Gordon
Tullock, with whom Buchanan collaborated on many books and academic
enterprises throughout their careers. As Robert D. Tollison states
in the foreword, " this book] is a radical departure from the way
democracies conduct their business. The "Calculus" is already a
book for the ages."
This classic work analyzes the political organization of a free
society through the lens of the economic organization of society.
The authors acknowledge their unease as economists in analyzing the
political organization, but they take the risk of forging into
unfamiliar territory because they believe the benefits of their
perspective will bear much fruit.
As the authors state, their objective in this book is "to analyze
the calculus of the rational individual when he is faced with
questions of constitutional choice . . . .We examine the choice]
process extensively only with reference to the problem of
decision-making rules."
The authors describe their approach as "economic individualism."
They believe that economists have explored individual choice
extensively in the market sector while social scientists have
largely ignored the dynamics of individual decision-making in the
dynamics of forming group action in the public sector.
Written in the early 1960s, "The Calculus of Consent" has become a
bulwark of the public choice movement for which James M. Buchanan
is so justly famous.
James M. Buchanan is an eminent economist who won the Alfred Nobel
Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences in 1986 and is considered one
of the greatest scholars of liberty in the twentieth century.
The entire series includes: Volume 1 "The Logical Foundations of
Constitutional Liberty"
Volume 2 "Public Principles of Public Debt "
Volume 3 "The Calculus of Consent "
Volume 4 "Public Finance in Democratic Process"
Volume 5 "The Demand and Supply of Public Goods"
Volume 6 "Cost and Choice"
Volume 7 "The Limits of Liberty"
Volume 8 "Democracy in Deficit"
Volume 9 "The Power to Tax"
Volume 10 "The Reason of Rules"
Volume 11 "Politics by Principle, Not Interest"
Volume 12 "Economic Inquiry and Its Logic"
Volume 13 "Politics as Public Choice"
Volume 14 "Debt and Taxes"
Volume 15 "Externalities and Public Expenditure Theory"
Volume 16 "Choice, Contract, and Constitutions"
Volume 17 "Moral Science and Moral Order"
Volume 18 "Federalism, Liberty, and the Law"
Volume 19 "Ideas, Persons, and Events"
Volume 20 "Indexes"
"Public Principles of Public Debt" is one of James M. Buchanan's
most important and influential books. The radical idea he conceived
was that: our reliance on public debt has amassed a sort of
orthodoxy that is commonly--and needlessly--assumed by taxpayers,
by politicians, and by economists themselves.
Buchanan dismisses the nearly universal belief (which continues to
this day) that the burden of debt is borne by the current
generation, and he argues persuasively that public debt is
shouldered in large part by generations still to come.
Written in 1958, this book represents Buchanan's first published
monograph, and its publication met with much controversy,
confusion, and speculation in the economic community. But the book
also added to Buchanan's rising stature in the early part of his
career as a brilliant and original thinker.
The arguments Buchanan lays out in this book had a considerable
impact on much of his later work. Buchanan's object here is to
establish a set of analytical claims about debt incidence. Current
anxieties over implicit Social Security debt are clear indications
of the rightness of Buchanan's then-revolutionary theory.
James M. Buchanan is an eminent economist who won the Alfred Nobel
Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences in 1986 and is considered one
of the greatest scholars of liberty in the twentieth century.
The entire series includes: Volume 1 "The Logical Foundations of
Constitutional Liberty"
Volume 2 "Public Principles of Public Debt "
Volume 3 "The Calculus of Consent "
Volume 4 "Public Finance in Democratic Process"
Volume 5 "The Demand and Supply of Public Goods"
Volume 6 "Cost and Choice"
Volume 7 "The Limits of Liberty"
Volume 8 "Democracy in Deficit"
Volume 9 "The Power to Tax"
Volume 10 "The Reason of Rules"
Volume 11 "Politics by Principle, Not Interest"
Volume 12 "Economic Inquiry and Its Logic"
Volume 13 "Politics as Public Choice"
Volume 14 "Debt and Taxes"
Volume 15 "Externalities and Public Expenditure Theory"
Volume 16 "Choice, Contract, and Constitutions"
Volume 17 "Moral Science and Moral Order"
Volume 18 "Federalism, Liberty, and the Law"
Volume 19 "Ideas, Persons, and Events"
Volume 20 "Indexes"
"Public Finance in Democratic Process" is James M. Buchanan's
monumental work that outlines the dynamics of individual choice as
it is displayed in the process of public finance.
Buchanan is perhaps nowhere more clearly a disciple of the great
Swedish economist Knut Wicksell than he is in the underlying
principles of this seminal work. Specifically, he elaborates on
these three central Wicksellian themes:
1.Analysis of market failure in the provision of public
goods.
2.The insistence on conceiving policy decisions as the outcome of
political processes.
3.The necessity of treating the tax and expense sides of the
budget as interconnected.
Echoing Wicksell's antipathy to the "benevolent despot" model of
government, Buchanan lays out in this book a starting point for
modern public-choice analysis. Recognizing the pathbreaking work he
is about to begin, Buchanan opens his preface by stating, "Fiscal
theory is normally discussed in a frame of reference wholly
different from that adopted in this book. This dramatic shift of
emphasis . . . . requires that I consider the processes through
which individual choices are transmitted, combined, and transformed
into collective outcomes. Careful research in this area is in its
infancy, and the necessary reliance on crude, unsophisticated
models underscores the exploratory nature of the work."
According to Geoffrey Brennan in the foreword, ""Public Finance in
Democratic Process" is a work more hospitable to public finance
orthodoxy and could be treated as an extension (albeit an important
one) of the conventional approach."
James M. Buchanan is an eminent economist who won the Alfred Nobel
Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences in 1986 and is considered one
of the greatest scholars of liberty in the twentieth century.
The entire series includes:
Volume 1 "The Logical Foundations of Constitutional Liberty"
Volume 2 "Public Principles of Public Debt "
Volume 3 "The Calculus of Consent "
Volume 4 "Public Finance in Democratic Process"
Volume 5 "The Demand and Supply of Public Goods"
Volume 6 "Cost and Choice"
Volume 7 "The Limits of Liberty"
Volume 8 "Democracy in Deficit"
Volume 9 "The Power to Tax"
Volume 10 "The Reason of Rules"
Volume 11 "Politics by Principle, Not Interest"
Volume 12 "Economic Inquiry and Its Logic"
Volume 13 "Politics as Public Choice"
Volume 14 "Debt and Taxes"
Volume 15 "Externalities and Public Expenditure Theory"
Volume 16 "Choice, Contract, and Constitutions"
Volume 17 "Moral Science and Moral Order"
Volume 18 "Federalism, Liberty, and the Law"
Volume 19 "Ideas, Persons, and Events"
Volume 20 "Indexes"
"Public Finance in Democratic Process" is James M. Buchanan's
monumental work that outlines the dynamics of individual choice as
it is displayed in the process of public finance.
Buchanan is perhaps nowhere more clearly a disciple of the great
Swedish economist Knut Wicksell than he is in the underlying
principles of this seminal work. Specifically, he elaborates on
these three central Wicksellian themes:
1.Analysis of market failure in the provision of public
goods.
2.The insistence on conceiving policy decisions as the outcome of
political processes.
3.The necessity of treating the tax and expense sides of the
budget as interconnected.
Echoing Wicksell's antipathy to the "benevolent despot" model of
government, Buchanan lays out in this book a starting point for
modern public-choice analysis. Recognizing the pathbreaking work he
is about to begin, Buchanan opens his preface by stating, "Fiscal
theory is normally discussed in a frame of reference wholly
different from that adopted in this book. This dramatic shift of
emphasis . . . . requires that I consider the processes through
which individual choices are transmitted, combined, and transformed
into collective outcomes. Careful research in this area is in its
infancy, and the necessary reliance on crude, unsophisticated
models underscores the exploratory nature of the work."
According to Geoffrey Brennan in the foreword, ""Public Finance in
Democratic Process" is a work more hospitable to public finance
orthodoxy and could be treated as an extension (albeit an important
one) of the conventional approach."
James M. Buchanan is an eminent economist who won the Alfred Nobel
Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences in 1986 and is considered one
of the greatest scholars of liberty in the twentieth century.
The entire series includes:
Volume 1 "The Logical Foundations of Constitutional Liberty"
Volume 2 "Public Principles of Public Debt "
Volume 3 "The Calculus of Consent "
Volume 4 "Public Finance in Democratic Process"
Volume 5 "The Demand and Supply of Public Goods"
Volume 6 "Cost and Choice"
Volume 7 "The Limits of Liberty"
Volume 8 "Democracy in Deficit"
Volume 9 "The Power to Tax"
Volume 10 "The Reason of Rules"
Volume 11 "Politics by Principle, Not Interest"
Volume 12 "Economic Inquiry and Its Logic"
Volume 13 "Politics as Public Choice"
Volume 14 "Debt and Taxes"
Volume 15 "Externalities and Public Expenditure Theory"
Volume 16 "Choice, Contract, and Constitutions"
Volume 17 "Moral Science and Moral Order"
Volume 18 "Federalism, Liberty, and the Law"
Volume 19 "Ideas, Persons, and Events"
Volume 20 "Indexes"
"Politics by principle is that which modern politics is not. What
we observe is 'politics by interest', whether in the form of
explicitly discriminatory treatment (rewarding or punishing) of
particular groupings of citizens or of some elitist-dirigiste
classification of citizens into the deserving or non-deserving on
the basis of a presumed superior wisdom about what is really 'good'
for us all. The proper principle for politics is that of
generalization of generality." -- James M Buchanan, from the
Preface. In his foreword, Hartmut Kliemt sums up the main objective
of James M Buchanan and Roger Congleton's 'Politics by Principle':
"Imposing constitutional constraints on majoritarian politics such
that a more principled pattern might emerge must be a political aim
of high priority for all who wish for free and responsible citizens
to live together peacefully as political equals under the rule of
general laws. Buchanan and Congleton's efforts to revive the
classical liberal agenda in Politics by Principle, Not Interest are
of the greatest interest in that regard. And this interest is not
merely a theoretical one. "As James Buchanan notes in introducing
his co-author Roger Congleton, 'Politics by Principle, Not
Interest' "embodies the working out and presentation of a single
idea...the extension and application of the generality principle to
majoritarian politics. "After laying out the theory, Buchanan and
Congleton attempt to work it out in practical political reality.
Buchanan notes that "it is much easier to discuss the generality
principle as an abstract ideal than it is to define the precise
conditions for its satisfaction in any particular setting. "Not
daunted by the difficulty of the task, the two authors succeed
brilliantly in applying the generality principle to the political
arena. They are interested not in laying down precise do's and
don'ts for politics, but in pointing out the ideal of
nondiscriminatory governance and calling for constitutional
constraints on political action so it conforms more closely to the
generality norm.
"Public Principles of Public Debt" is one of James M. Buchanan's
most important and influential books. The radical idea he conceived
was that: our reliance on public debt has amassed a sort of
orthodoxy that is commonly--and needlessly--assumed by taxpayers,
by politicians, and by economists themselves.
Buchanan dismisses the nearly universal belief (which continues to
this day) that the burden of debt is borne by the current
generation, and he argues persuasively that public debt is
shouldered in large part by generations still to come.
Written in 1958, this book represents Buchanan's first published
monograph, and its publication met with much controversy,
confusion, and speculation in the economic community. But the book
also added to Buchanan's rising stature in the early part of his
career as a brilliant and original thinker.
The arguments Buchanan lays out in this book had a considerable
impact on much of his later work. Buchanan's object here is to
establish a set of analytical claims about debt incidence. Current
anxieties over implicit Social Security debt are clear indications
of the rightness of Buchanan's then-revolutionary theory.
James M. Buchanan is an eminent economist who won the Alfred Nobel
Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences in 1986 and is considered one
of the greatest scholars of liberty in the twentieth century.
The entire series includes: Volume 1 "The Logical Foundations of
Constitutional Liberty"
Volume 2 "Public Principles of Public Debt "
Volume 3 "The Calculus of Consent "
Volume 4 "Public Finance in Democratic Process"
Volume 5 "The Demand and Supply of Public Goods"
Volume 6 "Cost and Choice"
Volume 7 "The Limits of Liberty"
Volume 8 "Democracy in Deficit"
Volume 9 "The Power to Tax"
Volume 10 "The Reason of Rules"
Volume 11 "Politics by Principle, Not Interest"
Volume 12 "Economic Inquiry and Its Logic"
Volume 13 "Politics as Public Choice"
Volume 14 "Debt and Taxes"
Volume 15 "Externalities and Public Expenditure Theory"
Volume 16 "Choice, Contract, and Constitutions"
Volume 17 "Moral Science and Moral Order"
Volume 18 "Federalism, Liberty, and the Law"
Volume 19 "Ideas, Persons, and Events"
Volume 20 "Indexes"
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