IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/sae/ratsoc/v7y1995i2p141-150.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Individual Rights, Emergent Social States, and Behavioral Feasibility

Author

Listed:
  • JAMES M. BUCHANAN

    (George Mason University)

Abstract

Individuals retain control over at least some minimal dimensions of personal behavior. If this is acknowledged, social states are not, and cannot be, objects of choice. Social states emerge from the interdependent choices made by acting individuals and groups. Individuals may ordinally rank social states, but the objects for collective choice must be assignments of rights or rules. Failure to appreciate the distinction here leads to misguided efforts to attain positions that may be imagined but that are beyond the limits of behavioral feasibility .

Suggested Citation

  • James M. Buchanan, 1995. "Individual Rights, Emergent Social States, and Behavioral Feasibility," Rationality and Society, , vol. 7(2), pages 141-150, April.
    • Handle: RePEc:sae:ratsoc:v:7:y:1995:i:2:p:141-150
    DOI: 10.1177/1043463195007002002
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1043463195007002002
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1177/1043463195007002002?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Sen, Amartya Kumar, 1970. "The Impossibility of a Paretian Liberal," Scholarly Articles 3612779, Harvard University Department of Economics.
    2. Sen, Amartya, 1970. "The Impossibility of a Paretian Liberal," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 78(1), pages 152-157, Jan.-Feb..
    3. James Buchanan, 1993. "How can constitutions be designed so that politicians who seek to serve “public interest” can survive and prosper?," Constitutional Political Economy, Springer, vol. 4(1), pages 1-6, December.
    4. Israel M. Kirzner, 1962. "Rational Action and Economic Theory," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 70, pages 380-380.
    5. Peter Bernholz, 1986. "A general constitutional possibility theorem," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 51(3), pages 249-265, January.
    6. James M. Buchanan, 1954. "Social Choice, Democracy, and Free Markets," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 62, pages 114-114.
    7. Ken Binmore, 1994. "Game Theory and the Social Contract, Volume 1: Playing Fair," MIT Press Books, The MIT Press, edition 1, volume 1, number 0262023636, December.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Franke, Marcel, 2022. "Transfer in a conflict model as a reason for (unconditional) basic income," FRIBIS Discussion Paper Series 03-2022, University of Freiburg, Freiburg Institute for Basic Income Studies (FRIBIS).
    2. Philipp Schreck & Dominik Aaken & Karl Homann, 2020. "“There’s Life in the Old Dog Yet”: The Homo economicus model and its value for behavioral ethics," Journal of Business Economics, Springer, vol. 90(3), pages 401-425, April.
    3. Martin Leschke, 2000. "Constitutional Choice and Prosperity: A Factor Analysis," Constitutional Political Economy, Springer, vol. 11(3), pages 265-279, September.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Wesley H. Holliday & Eric Pacuit, 2020. "Arrow’s decisive coalitions," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 54(2), pages 463-505, March.
    2. Bernholz, Peter, 1997. "Property rights, contracts, cyclical social preferences and the Coase theorem: A synthesis," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 13(3), pages 419-442, September.
    3. Fritz W. Scharpf, 1991. "Games Real Actors Could Play: The Challenge of Complexity," Journal of Theoretical Politics, , vol. 3(3), pages 277-304, July.
    4. Jean-François Laslier, 2023. "Universalization and altruism," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 60(4), pages 579-594, May.
    5. repec:hal:journl:dumas-00906152 is not listed on IDEAS
    6. Paul Weirich, 2011. "Exclusion from the social contract," Politics, Philosophy & Economics, , vol. 10(2), pages 148-169, May.
    7. Karl Widerquist, 2003. "Public Choice and Altruism," Eastern Economic Journal, Eastern Economic Association, vol. 29(3), pages 317-337, Summer.
    8. Michael Munger, 2006. "A Life Reexamined," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 128(3), pages 499-500, September.
    9. Kotaro Suzumura, 2002. "Introduction to social choice and welfare," Temi di discussione (Economic working papers) 442, Bank of Italy, Economic Research and International Relations Area.
    10. Peter Bernholz, 2012. "From The Calculus of Consent to extended logrolling, negative externalities, and the Coase theorem," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 152(3), pages 265-271, September.
    11. Michael Moehler, 2013. "Contractarian ethics and Harsanyi’s two justifications of utilitarianism," Politics, Philosophy & Economics, , vol. 12(1), pages 24-47, February.
    12. Roth, Timothy P., 1999. "Consequentialism, rights, and the new social welfare theory," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 28(1), pages 95-109.
    13. Antoinette Baujard, 2016. "Utilitarianism and anti-utilitarianism," Chapters, in: Gilbert Faccarello & Heinz D. Kurz (ed.), Handbook on the History of Economic Analysis Volume III, chapter 40, pages 576-588, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    14. Leo Katz & Alvaro Sandroni, 2020. "Limits on power and rationality," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 54(2), pages 507-521, March.
    15. Christian Roessler & Sandro Shelegia & Bruno Strulovici, 2018. "Collective Commitment," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 126(1), pages 347-380.
    16. Mariotti, Marco & Veneziani, Roberto, 2013. "On the impossibility of complete Non-Interference in Paretian social judgements," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 148(4), pages 1689-1699.
    17. Azam, Jean-Paul, 2008. "Macroeconomic Agenda for Fiscal Policy and Aid Effectiveness in Post-Conflict Countries," IDEI Working Papers 539, Institut d'Économie Industrielle (IDEI), Toulouse.
    18. Christian Seidl, 1990. "On the impossibility of a generalization of the libertarian resolution of the liberal paradox," Journal of Economics, Springer, vol. 51(1), pages 71-88, February.
    19. Jean Lainé & Ali Ozkes & Remzi Sanver, 2016. "Hyper-stable social welfare functions," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 46(1), pages 157-182, January.
    20. Ngo Long & Vincent Martinet, 2018. "Combining rights and welfarism: a new approach to intertemporal evaluation of social alternatives," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 50(1), pages 35-64, January.
    21. Bezalel Peleg, 2002. "Complete Characterization of Acceptable Game Forms by Effectivity Functions," Discussion Paper Series dp283, The Federmann Center for the Study of Rationality, the Hebrew University, Jerusalem.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:sae:ratsoc:v:7:y:1995:i:2:p:141-150. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: SAGE Publications (email available below). General contact details of provider: .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.