The Influence of Knut Wicksell on Richard Musgrave and James Buchanan

The schools of thought that Richard Musgrave and James Buchanan represent in the field of public finance differ a great deal. Musgrave represents the insider-Harvard vision of socio-political reality while Buchanan represents the outsider-Chicago-Virginia-public choice vision. The foundation of different schools of thought by Musgrave and Buchanan is surprising insofar as both Musgraveand Buchanan call Knut Wicksell their intellectual father and claim their own work to stand in the Wicksellian tradition. In this paper, the influence of Wicksell on the works of Musgrave and Buchanan is traced out. The paper comes to the conclusion that it is Buchanan on whose work Wicksell had the strongerinfluence.     

The subjectivist-contrarian position

Public Choice - James Buchanan endorses a radical version of subjectivism at several points in his body of work. I distinguish two distinct criteria for subjectivism in Buchanan. First, Buchanan...     

Buchanan at the American Founding: the constitutional political economy of a republic of equals and unequals

Public Choice - James M. Buchanan cited the American Founding as an important inspiration for his constitutional vision. Buchanan and the Founders shared a belief in the moral equality of persons...     

Protecting Individual Rights Through a Federal System: James Buchanan's View of Federalism

James Buchanan is a Nobel Prize winning economist and the founderof the public choice movement in economics. Public Choice playeda critical role in underpinning conservative attacks on thewelfare state in the 1980s and 1990s in the United States. Asa committed supporter of free markets and strong skeptic oflarge governments, Buchanan has long supported the use of federalismto protect individual liberty, promote democratic efficiency,and help foster community values. This article reviews Buchanan'sresearch on the advantages of a federal system.     

Superdissipation

I thank James M. Buchanan for a helpful discussion. The usual caveat applies.     

The calculus of piratical consent: the myth of the myth of social contract

Is a genuine social contract mythical? I argue that pirates created genuine social contracts that established a system of constitutional democracy based on the same decision-making calculus and with the same effects that Buchanan and Tullock’s contractarian theory of government describes in The Calculus of Consent. Pirates’ constitutional democracy is the “holy grail” of social contract theory. It demonstrates that the contractarian basis of constitutional democracy is more than a mere analytic device or hypothetical explanation of how such a government could emerge. In pirates’ case, Buchanan and Tullock’s social contract theory describes how constitutional democracy actually did emerge.     

Public finance in autocratic process: An empirical note

Our title is borrowed in a modified form from that used by Buchanan 1967. All data, as well as the relevant computer print-outs, is available upon request.     

Moral community and moral order: Buchanan’s theory of obligation

Public Choice - In 1981, James Buchanan published the text of a lecture entitled “Moral Community, Moral Order, and Moral Anarchy.” The argument in that paper deserves more attention...     

Rediscovering Buchanan’s rediscovery: non-market exchange versus antiseptic allocation

Public Choice - While Buchanan is best known for the economics of politics and constitutions, his seminal contributions to this field are but one branch of his more underlying methodology and...     

James M. Buchanan centennial birthday academic conference: an introduction to the special issue

Public Choice - This special issue brings together the papers presented and discussed at the James M. Buchanan Centennial Birthday Academic Conference hosted at Middle Tennessee State University....     

James M. Buchanan’s constitutional project: past and future

Public Choice - A substantial amount of James Buchanan’s academic work was devoted to his constitutional project: the development of procedures for designing constitutional rules that would...     

How Buchanan’s concern for the South shaped his first academic works

Public Choice - The purpose of this paper is to show that, at the very beginning of his career, Buchanan was interested in concrete issues related to the economic situation in the South rather than...     

Chicago Political Economy

I am indebted to James Buchanan, William Dougan, David Fand, William Mitchell, and George Stigler for helpful discussions and comments. The usual caveat applied.     

J. M. Buchanan’s contractarian constitutionalism: political economy for democratic society

Public Choice - The purpose of this paper is to support three claims. Firstly, that it is Buchanan’s uncompromising commitment to a methodological and a normative individualism to which his...     

The state of nature in the shadow of contract formation: Adding a missing link to J.M. Buchanan's social contract theory

The social contract theory of J.M. Buchanan provides no clear-cut answer on the question which one of the multitude of possible Pareto-efficient contracts is chosen by individuals who shape a contract in an (imaginary) state of nature. This deficiency is remedied in this paper by adding the Nash-bargaining theory. It seems to be in line with at least part of Buchanan's reasoning. Whereas for Buchanan the configuration of contract depends unilaterally on the natural equilibrium of the state of nature, we are able to show that the parties' (rational) contractual expectations have repercussions for their behavior in the state of nature. That is why the location of the natural equilibrium proves to be heavily dependent on the chosen bargaining theory. The implication is that assessing the legitimacy of a given constitutional order or contract (on the basis of the natural equilibrium) depends on the particular bargaining theory chosen to solve the underlying constitutional distribution problem. I am grateful to D. Andrews, D. Schmidtchen and U. Witt for helpful comments on earlier drafts. The usual caveat applies.     

Review Essays

Patrick Dunleavy: Democracy, Bureaucracy and Public Choice
Hartmut Kliemt: Papers on Buchanan and Related Subjects
George Tsebelis: Nested Games. Rational Choice in Comparative Politics
Krister Ståhlberg (ed.): Parlamenten i Norden
Erik Damgaard (ed.): Parlamentarisk forandring i Norden
Martti Noponen (ed.): Suomen kansanedustusjärjestelmä .     

Gordon Tullock and Public Choice

Gordon Tullock is one of the founders of the field of public choice, of the Public Choice Society, and of the Public Choice Center. He is a coauthor with James M. Buchanan of one of the true classics in the public choice field—The Calculus of Consent. He has been one of the field’s most prolific scholars, with his research spanning virtually all dimensions of the public choice field. This article surveys his major contributions.     

Leviathans, federal transfers, and the cartelization hypothesis

Federal fiscal arrangements are argued to give rise to tacit collusion among competing Leviathans (Brennan and Buchanan, The Power to Tax, CUP, 1980). Though frequently encountered in academic and policy discussions, the cartelization hypothesis has rarely been scrutinized formally. This paper explores the effect of federal equalizing transfers on Leviathans engaged in tax competition. Contrary to the hypothesis, equalization is found to potentially complement tax competition in taming the Leviathan by implicitly taxing tax revenues extracted by the Leviathan. Thus, transfers might be an appropriate constitutional provision against fiscal expropriation.     

The constitutional political economy of Gordon Tullock

This paper surveys Gordon Tullock’s contributions to constitutional political economy. His first major contribution was his joint project with James Buchanan on liberal constitutional design. The explicitly constitutional analysis of The Calculus was followed by a series of papers and books that focused on the use of resources in conflict, including Tullock’s contributions to the anarchy and rent-seeking literatures. Tullock also pioneered the rational choice-based analysis of dictatorships and the relative merits of alternative legal systems, topics that has been neglected until fairly recently by most scholars working in the CPE tradition.     

The endogenous public choice theorist

Public choice theory has effectively explored defects in collective action and political processes. However, little attention has been given to the fact that any recommendations as to how to improve the situation can only be realized on the basis of precisely those defective institutions. What turns up here can be identified as a problem of self-reference. Normative contributions by Buchanan and Hayek may serve as an example. In order to clear up the seemingly paradoxical situation, “endogenization” of the public choice theorist within an extended theory is suggested. A straight-forward extension is briefly outlined.