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.     

Hobbes and the prophet Samuel on leviathan government

Thomas Hobbes’ Leviathan is one of the most important treatises in the history of political economy and has influenced writings on constitutional economics and public choice. In his treatise, Hobbes proposed the desirability of voluntary subjugation to an authoritarian ruler. Hobbes appealed to the authority of the prophet Samuel to make his case for Leviathan, a precedent that has remained unquestioned for some 350 years. Yet Samuel clearly warned against the dangers of appointing an all-powerful king. Hobbes’s argument in favor of Leviathan thus demands an authority other than Samuel.     

Tragedy of the Fiscal Common?: Fiscal Stock Externalities in a Leviathan Model of Federalism

The paper deals with vertical tax competition between self-interested governments in a dynamic environment. In a federation, competition between the federal and the state governments arises when tax sources are not separated but pooled. Since dynamic inefficiencies will be stressed, the focus is on fiscal stock externalities rather than on flow externalities. The paper shows that the Leviathans in a federation tax the fiscal common resource more extensively than the single Leviathan in a unitary state. Furthermore, the positive impact of political stability on public consumption of the fiscal common will be discussed.     

Hobbes's Liberty and Skinner's Discontent

This article questions the plausibility of the interpretation of Hobbes's liberty that Quentin Skinner articulates in Hobbes and Republican Liberty . It argues that Skinner's book fails to prove two of the three claims it must uphold: the 'textual accuracy claim' and his 'methodological claim'. This article maintains that understanding Hobbes's use of liberty in Leviathan according to his definition of 'corporall liberty', as Skinner does, ignores many of Hobbes's claims that invoke liberty outside the beginning of chapter 21, resulting in a one-dimensional reading of Hobbes.     

The Present's Historical Task: Kracauer as Reader of Collingwood

Siegfried Kracauer's reading of the work of R.G. Collingwood illuminates the crisis point in the relation between philosophy, history and how the present is thought. In this paper I argue that Kracauer's dismissal of Collingwood illuminates a misunderstanding of the latter's philosophical project, and takes no account of a certain affinity between the two thinkers. Collingwood not only shared Kracauer's view that a philosophically oriented historical investigation of the past might offer some hope for the present, but also had a fuller grasp of the philosophical implications of the ambivalent relation between historical time and the present than Kracauer gave him credit for.     

On distinguishing between Leviathan and Public Interest governments in a federal state

The purpose of this paper is to derive testable implications for the proposition that provincial governments in a specific federal system are Leviathans, that is, revenue maximizers. The Leviathan model, associated with Brennan and Buchanan (1980) hypothesizes that governments behave like monopolies who seek to maximize their revenue. This model is contrasted with an alternative hypothesis, the Public Interest Theory. A theoretical model of a federal state, based on the Canadian system, is constructed and testable implications are derived. The principal feature of the model is that it is set in the context of a particular game involving the federal government, provincial governments and a consumer. In attempting to model this situation, care has been taken to try to incorporate as many institutional features of the Canadian federal system as possible, while still allowing the model to be somewhat parsimonious. With some modification, the model may be applicable to other countries with similar federal systems.     

Pluralism and the Hobbesian Logic of Negative Constitutionalism

According to an essentially Hobbesian account of political order, the claims of cultural and national minorities within a state to some form of constitutional or institutional recognition are morally suspect and politically undesirable. Underlying this Hobbesian logic is a particular understanding of the relation between law and politics. 'Negative constitutionalism' is focused primarily on limiting the damage government can do. However the pursuit of constitutional minimalism runs up against the challenges presented by deeply diverse political communities. By investigating the manner in which Hobbes has been invoked in arguments concerning the relation between the rule of law and the 'politics of recognition', I argue (i) that the distinction between the rule of law and politics is fundamentally unstable, and (ii) that in invoking Hobbes, modern theorists have missed an important element of Hobbes's own argument—namely, his appreciation of this instability. As an example, I examine the way Hobbes is used in some of John Gray's recent writings on pluralism and liberalism.     

THE CREATION AND MAINTENANCE OF GOVERNMENT: A NEGLECTED DIMENSION OF HOBBES'S LEVIATHAN

Abstract. Philosophical preoccupation with moral, legal, and hypothetical problems have led us to neglect those practical (or strategic) dimensions of Leviathan in which Hobbes confronts the problems of how order can actually be politically created from disorder and how, once begun, the germ of order can be perpetuated in stable political society. The possibilities of political creation reside in the idea of confederation and, importantly, in men's fundamental manipulability. The consequent maintenance of political order depends, for Hobbes, on creating conditions in which, without excessive or unnecessary resort to force, men can be made to forebear conflict among themselves and resistance to government. Those conditions, as in the case of political creation, depend upon appearances, illusion, and political manipulation.     

Aristotle, Hobbes and Chimpanzees

The article is an exercise in the philosophical anthropology of politics. According to Aristotle, man is a political animal but not uniquely so, whereas, according to Hobbes, politics is artificial and the preserve of humans alone. Both Aristotle and Hobbes draw upon contemporary science. The dominant relevant science today is neo-Darwinism – humans are products of evolution and genetically closely related to the other primates. The argument that chimpanzees are political, thus putatively endorsing an Aristotelian rather than a Hobbesian perspective, is scrutinised. However, at best, chimpanzees are only metaphorically political. While this conclusion may weaken the Aristotelian position, it cannot of itself vindicate the Hobbesian one. The philosophical anthropological endeavour to investigate the relation between politics and human nature still has work to do.     

Equity and Political Economy in Thomas Hobbes

Thomas Hobbes is often viewed as a seminal figure in the development of the homo economicus philosophical anthropology central to the acquisitive, bourgeois morality of liberal modernity. The present study challenges this interpretation of Hobbes as an antecedent to free market ideology by arguing that his political economy presupposed a complex relation between contract, law, and social networks of credit informed by prudence and robust norms of equity. The normative claims of equity permeate Hobbes's holistic account of political economy and inform his vision of liberal statecraft that gave priority to prudential judgment against economic determinism, especially as Hobbes understood trade, taxation, allocation of resources, and the provision of social welfare. I will conclude by reflecting upon how Hobbes's political economy both reveals the internal diversity within the liberal intellectual tradition and can help us to better understand and critique contemporary liberal states and democratic theory.     

Carl Schmitt in West German perspective

Carl Schmitt: Theorist for the Reich. By Joseph W. Bendersky. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1983. Pp.xiv + 320. £20.50.

Der Leviathan in der Staatslehre des Thomas Hobbes. Sinn und Fehlschlag eines politischen Symbols. By Carl Schmitt. Koln: Hohenheim Verlag, 1982 (reprint of the 1938 edition). Pp.244. DM34.80.

Land und Meer. Eine weltgeschichtliche Betrachtung. By Carl Schmitt. Köln: Hohenheim Verlag, 1981 (reprint of the 1942 edition). Pp.107. DM18.     

Can tax evasion tame Leviathan governments?

This paper asks to what extent institutional features that facilitate tax evasion may keep Leviathan governments at bay. The specific feature we look at is banking secrecy abroad. The analysis draws on a 16-generation OLG model in which tax rates are determined in a repeated game between voters and a rent-seeking Leviathan government. Key insights are: (1) Effects on any generation alive when change takes place may differ substantially from steady-state effects that accrue for generations yet to be born. (2) There is considerable intergenerational diversity in these effects that is not monotonic as we move from young to old. Combined, these results suggest that the political economy of pertinent institutional change may be quite complex.     

'TRADITIONS' AS CONTEXT IN THE HISTORY OF POLITICAL THEORY

Abstract An adequate methodology in the history of political theory is dependent on a adequate philosophy of history. Firstly, in the course of a critical consideration of other writers on methodology (principally W. G. Greenleaf and Q. Skinner) it is suggested that 'intellectual traditions', of two sorts, might provide an appropriate unit of context. Secondly, a broadly anti-naturalist philosophy of history is adopted, which makes use of Collingwood and Hegel, and it is argued that intellectual traditions are compatible with this view of historical knowledge. It is concluded that the opposition between the universalist text-orientated approach and the particularist historical approach to the study of the history of political theory is a false dichotomy. We can learn from past ideas as a traditional inheritance.     

Can Leviathan governments mitigate the tragedy of the commons?

This paper explores the conjecture whether the Leviathan motive of politicians — to tax for the purpose of raising revenues rather than for benevolent, Pigovian motives — helps to overcome the inefficiency of international pollution spillovers such as in the cases of acid rain and global warming. It turns out that this conjecture is true in a static context that captures flow externalities, e.g., acid rain, as long as environmental damages are not too high. In contrast, Leviathan motives aggravate the already existing inefficiency in the case of stock externalities (e.g., global warming) despite probably high taxes at the beginning.     

Can Decentralization Limit Government Growth? A Test of the Leviathan Hypothesis for the Indian Federation

Decentralization in India has only recently gained momentum,particularly with the 73^rd and 74^th amendments in 1992, whichextended constitutional recognition to local governments. Againstthis backdrop, this article examines the Leviathan hypothesisput forth by Brennan and Buchanan for the Indian economy. Thehypothesis asserts that total government intrusion into theeconomy should be smaller when taxes and expenditure are decentralized.A caveat to the Leviathan hypothesis is the Collusion hypothesis,which suggests that the disciplining impact of decentralizationcan be nullified if revenue decentralization does not keep pacewith expenditure decentralization and if there is an increasein dependence on intergovernmental grants. Empirical testingfor the Indian federation vindicates both hypotheses, thus suggestingthat a two-pronged strategy is required if government growthis to be checked. More effort must be made to strengthen localbodies. This must be accompanied by a close look at intergovernmentaltransfers and by an attempt to restrict their growth.     

On Hobbesian Resistance Theory

As many have observed, Hobbes's political theory contained elements of an inchoate resistance theory. The present article identifies those elements, and considers their significance for the general interpretation of Hobbes's thought. It is suggested that Hobbes's resistance theory provides evidence of his belief that the artificial commonwealth was built upon foundations of natural morality. If the sovereign ruler of any commonwealth infringed natural morality then she might well face the natural punishment of rebellion, even though in the artificial realm of civil law this rebellion could never be justified. In the light of these remarks, the interpretation of Hobbes given by Howard Warrender is reexamined. Although Warrender's conclusion that Hobbes grounded natural morality in the command of God cannot be sustained, it is shown that much else in Warrender's work remains valid. In particular, his contention that Hobbes was a genuine natural law thinker seems more defensible when Hobbesian resistance theory is properly understood.     

Electoral accountability in a country with two-tiered government

In democracies, elections are the primary mechanism for making politicians act in voters?? interests, but voters are unable to prevent that some resources are diverted to political rents. With two levels of government, the rents are reduced if voters require higher beneficial public expenditures for reelecting incumbents. Voters can also strengthen their power by holding politicians liable also for decisions made by the other level of government. When the incumbent at one level acts as a Stackelberg leader with respect to the other, there is no risk of this leading to Leviathan policies on the part of the incumbents.     

From conditions of equality to demands of justice: equal freedom,motivation and justification in Hobbes,Rousseau and Rawls

Equal freedom is the common starting point for most contractual theories of justice from Hobbes and Rousseau to Rawls. But while equal freedom defines a common starting point for these theories, this does not result in a general consensus on the conception of justice. On the contrary, different ways of conceptualizing the contractual starting point leads to different conceptions of the demands of justice. To fully understand the relationship between equal freedom and justice we therefore first need to explicate how and why the initial condition of equality is transformed into demands of justice. In this paper we discuss how this transformation takes place in the theories of Hobbes, Rousseau and Rawls, with particular emphasis on the vexed relationship between motivation and justification.     

Nation states vs. united empire: Effects of political competition on economic growth

Is political fragmentation, i.e., nation states, more favorable to economic growth than political unification, i.e., a united empire? This study develops an endogenous-growth model to analyze the growth effects of fragmentation versus unification. Under unification, the economy is vulnerable to excessive Leviathan taxation and possibly subject to the costs of unifying heterogeneous populations. Under fragmentation, the competing rulers are constrained in taxation but spend excessively on military defense. If capital mobility is above (below) a threshold, then fragmentation (unification) would favor growth, and this threshold is increasing in the degree of defense competition and decreasing in the costs of heterogeneity.