IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/h/eme/rhetzz/s0743-41542016000034a013.html
   My bibliography  Save this book chapter

Romance or No Romance? Adam Smith and David Hume in James Buchanan’s “Politics without Romance”

In: Research in the History of Economic Thought and Methodology

Author

Listed:
  • Andrew Farrant
  • Maria Pia Paganelli

Abstract

Can we model politics as exclusively based on self-interest, leaving virtue aside? How much romance is there in the study of politics? We show that James Buchanan, a founder of public choice and constitutional political economy, reintroduces a modicum of romance into politics, despite claiming that his work is the study of “politics without romance”: Buchanan’s model needs an ethical attitude to defend rules against rent-seeking. We claim that Adam Smith, more than David Hume, should be considered one of the primary intellectual influences on Buchanan’s public choice and constitutional political economy. It is commonly believed that Hume assumes in politics every man ought to be considered a knave, making him an influence on Buchanan’s idea of politics without romance. Yet, it is Smith who, like Buchanan, describes rent-seeking and suggests that public virtues may be the remedy through which good rules maintaining liberty and prosperity can be generated and enforced. Smith, like Buchanan, rejects sole reliance on economic incentives: the study of politics needs some romance.

Suggested Citation

  • Andrew Farrant & Maria Pia Paganelli, 2016. "Romance or No Romance? Adam Smith and David Hume in James Buchanan’s “Politics without Romance”," Research in the History of Economic Thought and Methodology, in: Research in the History of Economic Thought and Methodology, volume 34, pages 357-372, Emerald Group Publishing Limited.
    • Handle: RePEc:eme:rhetzz:s0743-41542016000034a013
    DOI: 10.1108/S0743-41542016000034A013
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.1108/S0743-41542016000034A013/full/html?utm_source=repec&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=repec
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.1108/S0743-41542016000034A013/full/epub?utm_source=repec&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=repec&title=10.1108/S0743-41542016000034A013
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.1108/S0743-41542016000034A013/full/pdf?utm_source=repec&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=repec
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1108/S0743-41542016000034A013?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
    ---><---

    Citations

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


    Cited by:

    1. Michael Munger, 2020. "Moral community and moral order: Buchanan’s theory of obligation," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 183(3), pages 509-521, June.

    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:eme:rhetzz:s0743-41542016000034a013. 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.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using 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: Emerald Support (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.