Synopses & Reviews
The Economics of Politics is the fourth volume in Liberty Funds The Selected Works of Gordon Tullock. This volume includes some of Gordon Tullocks most noteworthy contributions to the theory and application of public choice, which is a relatively new science that links economics and political action. This volume combines the best parts of two of his books, Private Wants: Public Means and On Voting, as well as his famous monograph The Vote Motive.
The common thread of The Economics of Politics is the importance of the bond between Homo politicus and Homo economicus: they are the same species, each driven largely by self-interest in vigorous pursuit of such personal objectives as wealth, power, prestige, and income security within the confines of society. The Economics of Politics covers such diverse public choice topics as: the nature and origins of public choice, the power of using economic analysis to understand and predict the behavior of politically influenced markets, and an evaluation of voting rules and political institutions.
Equally confident in both the normative and the positive branches of the discipline, and well-versed in the wide variety of institutions and practices of democracy throughout history, Tullock takes the reader on a journey that goes well beyond the conventional horizon of public choice.
Charles K. Rowley is Duncan Black Professor of Economics at George Mason University and a Senior Fellow of the James M. Buchanan Center for Political Economy at George Mason University. He is also General Director of the Locke Institute.
The entire series includes:
Volume 1: Virginia Political Economy
Volume 2: The Calculus of Consent
Volume 3: The Organization of Inquiry (November 2004)
Volume 4: The Economics of Politics (February 2005)
Volume 5: The Rent-Seeking Society (March 2005)
Volume 6: Bureaucracy (June 2005)
Volume 7: The Economics and Politics of Wealth Redistribution (July 2005)
Volume 8: The Social Dilemma: Of Autocracy, Revolution, Coup d'Etat, and War (December 2005)
Volume 9: Law and Economics (December 2005)
Volume 10: Economics without Frontiers (January 2006)
Synopsis
The Economics of Politics is the fourth volume in Liberty Fund's The Selected Works of Gordon Tullock. This volume includes some of Gordon Tullock's most noteworthy contributions to the theory and application of public choice, which is a relatively new science that links economics and political action. This volume combines the best parts of two of his books, Private Wants: Public Means and On Voting, as well as his famous monograph The Vote Motive.
The common thread of The Economics of Politics is the importance of the bond between Homo politicus and Homo economicus: they are the same species, each driven largely by self-interest in vigorous pursuit of such personal objectives as wealth, power, prestige, and income security within the confines of society. The Economics of Politics covers such diverse public choice topics as: the nature and origins of public choice, the power of using economic analysis to understand and predict the behavior of politically influenced markets, and an evaluation of voting rules and political institutions.
Equally confident in both the normative and the positive branches of the discipline, and well-versed in the wide variety of institutions and practices of democracy throughout history, Tullock takes the reader on a journey that goes well beyond the conventional horizon of public choice.
Gordon Tullock is Professor Emeritus of Law at George Mason University, where he was Distinguished Research Fellow in the Center for Study of Public Choice and University Professor of Law and Economics. He also taught at the University of South Carolina, the University of Virginia, Rice University, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, and the University of Arizona. In 1966 he founded the journal that became Public Choice and remained its editor until 1990.
Charles K. Rowley was Duncan Black Professor of Economics at George Mason University and a Senior Fellow of the James M. Buchanan Center for Political Economy at George Mason University. He was also General Director of the Locke Institute.
Table of Contents
Introduction,
by Charles K. Rowley ix
1. THE NATURE OF PUBLIC CHOICE
An Economic Analysis of Political Choice 3
Origins of Public Choice 11
People Are People: The Elements of Public Choice 32
2. WHAT SHOULD GOVERNMENT DO?
Mosquito Abatement 49
Property, Contract, and the State 68
Bargaining 86
Externalities and All That 97
The Costs of Government 114
Remedies 137
The Social Costs of Reducing Social Cost 156
3. THE VOTE MOTIVE: AN ESSAY IN THE ECONOMICS OF POLITICS 167
4. RATIONAL IGNORANCE AND ITS IMPLICATIONS
Political Ignorance 225
The Politics of Persuasion 241
The Economics of Lying 259
Some Further Thoughts on Voting 270
5. VOTING PARADOXES
A Measure of the Importance of Cyclical Majorities
(Colin D. Campbell and Gordon Tullock )275
The Paradox of Voting —A Possible Method of Calculation 280
Computer Simulation of a Small Voting System (Gordon Tullock
and Colin D. Campbell )283
The Paradox of Not Voting for Oneself 293
Avoiding the Voter ’s Paradox Democratically: Comment 295
An Approach to Empirical Measures of Voting Paradoxes
(John L. Dobra and Gordon Tullock )297
6. THE MEDIAN VOTER THEOREM
Duncan Black: The Founding Father, 23 May 1908 –14 January 1991 301
Hotelling and Downs in Two Dimensions 305
7. VOTE TRADING AND LOGROLLING AS MECHANISMS
OF POLITICAL EXCHANGE
A Simple Algebraic Logrolling Model 319
More Complicated Log-rolling 331
Efficiency in Log-rolling 346
8. MORE ON DEMAND REVEALING
Some Limitations of Demand-Revealing Processes: Comment
(T. Nicolaus Tideman and Gordon Tullock )361
Coalitions under Demand Revealing
(T. Nicolaus Tideman and Gordon Tullock )366
More Thought about Demand Revealing 373
9. VOTING METHODS AND POLITICAL MARKET BEHAVIOR
Proportional Representation 381
Democracy as It Really Is 395
A Bouquet of Governments 401
Thoughts about Representative Government 413
Voting, Different Methods and General Considerations 427
A Bouquet of Voting Methods 437
INDEX 449