IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/afd/wpaper/2403.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Buchanan and the social contract: Coordination failures and the atrophy of property rights

Author

Listed:
  • Stefano Dughera

    (University of Piemonte Orientale)

  • Alain Marciano

    (University of Torino)

Abstract

James Buchanan advocated that societies should be based on a social contract. He rejected anarchy, seeing it as a “Hobbesian jungle” that calls for government intervention to maintain social order. He also opposed to theories of spontaneous order. These views led to debates about the compatibility of Buchanan’s works with classical liberalism, and even with democracy. This paper contributes to this discussion by exploring the development of Buchanan's views on anarchy from a historical viewpoint. We argue that Buchanan's earlier works contain a theory of spontaneous cooperation, and that Buchanan held to this theory until the 1970s. Then, the deteriorating conditions of American society got him convinced that albeit anarchy is theoretically desirable, cooperation requires individuals to enter a social contract and delegate enforcement authority to political institutions. Overall, the paper reconciles Buchanan's practical views with his philosophical inclinations, portraying him as a practical contractarian but a philosophical anarchist.

Suggested Citation

  • Stefano Dughera & Alain Marciano, 2024. "Buchanan and the social contract: Coordination failures and the atrophy of property rights," Working Papers AFED 24-03, Association Francaise d'Economie du Droit (AFED).
    • Handle: RePEc:afd:wpaper:2403
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://afed.ovh/RePEc/afd/wpaper/AFED-WP-24-03.pdf
    File Function: First version
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Jean-Baptiste Fleury & Alain Marciano, 2018. "The Making of a Constitutionalist: James Buchanan on Education," Post-Print hal-01835036, HAL.
    2. Richard Abel Musgrave, 1941. "The Planning Approach in Public Economy: A Reply," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 55(2), pages 319-324.
    3. F. H. Knight, 1924. "Some Fallacies in the Interpretation of Social Cost," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 38(4), pages 582-606.
    4. Alain Marciano & Steven G. Medema, 2015. "Market Failure in Context: Introduction," History of Political Economy, Duke University Press, vol. 47(5), pages 1-19, Supplemen.
    5. Tibor Scitovsky, 1954. "Two Concepts of External Economies," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 62(2), pages 143-143.
    6. Benjamin Powell & Edward Stringham, 2009. "Public choice and the economic analysis of anarchy: a survey," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 140(3), pages 503-538, September.
    7. Leeson, Peter T., 2011. "Government, clubs, and constitutions," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 80(2), pages 301-308.
    8. Buchanan, James M & Bush, Winston C, 1974. "Political Constraints on Contractual Redistribution," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 64(2), pages 153-157, May.
    9. Richard Abel Musgrave, 1939. "The Voluntary Exchange Theory of Public Economy," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 53(2), pages 213-237.
    10. Karen I. Vaughn, 2014. "Buchanan as Subjectivist," Southern Economic Journal, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 80(4), pages 918-925, April.
    11. repec:wly:soecon:v:80:4:y:2014:p:918-925 is not listed on IDEAS
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    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. Marciano, Alain, 2011. "Buchanan on externalities: An exercise in applied subjectivism," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 80(2), pages 280-289.
    2. Ilia Murtazashvili & Jennifer Murtazashvili, 2015. "Anarchy, self-governance, and legal titling," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 162(3), pages 287-305, March.
    3. Johansson, Börje, 2004. "Parsing the Menagerie of Agglomeration and Network Externalities," Working Paper Series in Economics and Institutions of Innovation 2, Royal Institute of Technology, CESIS - Centre of Excellence for Science and Innovation Studies.
    4. Spash, Clive L., 2021. "The History of Pollution ‘Externalities’ in Economic Thought," SRE-Discussion Papers 2021/01, WU Vienna University of Economics and Business.
    5. Maxime Desmarais-Tremblay, 2014. "On the Definition of Public Goods. Assessing Richard A. Musgrave's contribution," Post-Print halshs-00951577, HAL.
    6. Ilia Murtazashvili & Ennio E. Piano, 2019. "Governance of shale gas development: Insights from the Bloomington school of institutional analysis," The Review of Austrian Economics, Springer;Society for the Development of Austrian Economics, vol. 32(2), pages 159-179, June.
    7. Leonid Krasnozhon & John Levendis, 2018. "Weekend racer: cheating and self-governance in road racing," Economics of Governance, Springer, vol. 19(1), pages 75-90, February.
    8. Beatrice Cherrier & Jean-Baptiste Fleury, 2017. "Economists’ interest in collective decision after World War II: a history," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 172(1), pages 23-44, July.
    9. E.T. Verhoef, 1999. "Externalities," Chapters, in: Jeroen C.J.M. van den Bergh (ed.), Handbook of Environmental and Resource Economics, chapter 13, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    10. Kenneth Arrow, 1970. "Political and Economic Evaluation of Social Effects and Externalities," NBER Chapters, in: The Analysis of Public Output, pages 1-30, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    11. Brett M. Frischmann & Alain Marciano & Giovanni Battista Ramello, 2019. "Retrospectives: Tragedy of the Commons after 50 Years," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 33(4), pages 211-228, Fall.
    12. Maurice Lagueux, 2010. "The residual character of externalities," The European Journal of the History of Economic Thought, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 17(4), pages 957-973.
    13. Steven G. Medema, 2020. "The Coase Theorem at Sixty," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 58(4), pages 1045-1128, December.
    14. William F. Shughart II & Josh T. Smith, 2020. "The broken bridge of public finance: majority rule, earmarked taxes and social engineering," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 183(3), pages 315-338, June.
    15. Alain Marciano, 2023. "The Political Economy of Buchanan's Samaritan's Dilemma," Springer Books, in: Martin A. Leroch & Florian Rupp (ed.), Power and Responsibility, pages 345-357, Springer.
    16. Andrew Young, 2015. "From Caesar to Tacitus: changes in early Germanic governance circa 50 BC-50 AD," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 164(3), pages 357-378, September.
    17. Matthias Schröter & Markus Groth & Stefan Baumgärtner, 2010. "Pigous Beitrag zur Nachhaltigkeitsökonomie," Working Paper Series in Economics 180, University of Lüneburg, Institute of Economics.
    18. Fisher, Anthony C & Peterson, Frederick M, 1976. "The Environment in Economics: A Survey," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 14(1), pages 1-33, March.
    19. Manuel Pacheco Coelho & Maria Leonor Oliveira, 2011. "Externalities and Public Provision of Education," International Journal of Finance, Insurance and Risk Management, International Journal of Finance, Insurance and Risk Management, vol. 1(3), pages 142-142.
    20. Alexander William Salter, 2016. "Political Property Rights and Governance Outcomes: A Theory of the Corporate Polity," Journal of Private Enterprise, The Association of Private Enterprise Education, vol. 31(Winter 20), pages 1-20.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Buchanan; social contract; government intervention; anarchy; spontaneous order;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • B53 - Schools of Economic Thought and Methodology - - Current Heterodox Approaches - - - Austrian
    • H11 - Public Economics - - Structure and Scope of Government - - - Structure and Scope of Government
    • P26 - Political Economy and Comparative Economic Systems - - Socialist and Transition Economies - - - Property Rights

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:afd:wpaper:2403. 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: AFED (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/afeddea.html .

    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.