In the wake of successful pump-priming
during the Great Depression, many economists placed their faith in government
to correct the social ills that seem to plague modern mixed economies.
Legislators and bureaucrats were viewed as enlightened public servants,
inspired always to act in the public interest. Economists of this school of
thought view identifying and proposing ideal governmental solutions as
serving the public interest, and look on practical political problems
associated with these solutions as outside the scope of their expertise. For more than four decades,
James Buchanan and Gordon Tullock have attempted to change this conception of
government and to reconstruct the theory of the public sector based on
economic precepts of individual behavior. Their desire is to make the study
of politics—"public choice" as they call it—more precise and
scientific. Joined in this effort by their students and numerous converts to
the public choice school of thought, Buchanan and Tullock have made great
strides in trying to integrate political science and economics. Using the
principles of economics as a touchstone, they have provided an
individualistic notion of public choice and have attempted to test the
validity of their theories with real-world data. The starting point of the
Buchanan / Tullock thesis is that all decisions are made by individuals, and
the most powerful driving force in any decision is the self-interest of the
decisionmaker. In this theory, politicians and bureaucrats are no different
from other decisionmakers merely by virtue of their offices. In fact, these
individuals tend to pursue bureaucratic "profits," although the
latter are commonly revealed in ways other than fatter paychecks: plush
offices, chauffeured limousines, expensive gym facilities and dining halls,
beautiful (if not talented} secretaries, and above all, expansions in the
sizes and powers of their bureaucracies. As elementary as this seems—at least
to economists—it is amazing how far this premise can be pushed to make modem
political behavior intelligible and predictable. Few modern economists have
done as much as Buchanan and Tullock to expose the nature of economic
incentives within the public sector. Individually and in concert,
they have also written widely on a number of economic policy problems, but
especially on public finance, public goods, and externalities. In The
Calculus of Consent, they attempt to develop a theory of constitutions and to
analyze political behavior under alternative group decision rules (for
example, simple majority, plurality, and so forth). Their later work sought
to explain the emergence of law, government, and property rights. Tullock
wrote a paper that developed the concept of "rent-seeking" at about
the same time that Anna Schwartz of the Buchanan is a native of |
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Author:
Ralph Byrns |
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Economics
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