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The Contractarian Constitutional Political Economy of James Buchanan

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  • Roger D. Congleton

    (West Virginia University, College of Business and Economics)

Abstract

This paper attempts to outline and summarize the main body of work on one strand of James Buchanan's work, constitutional political economy. The grounding ideas and inferences of Buchanan's approach can be summarized as follows: (a) The appropriate method for analyzing and understanding social phenomena is the individual. (b) There are often mutual gains that can only be realized through collective action. (c) Collective action produces both property right systems (civil law) and collective decision-making systems (political constitutions). (d) One cannot know beforehand the ex-act consequences of rules, nor can one read the minds of those affected by those rules. (e) Every individual counts, so the legitimacy of collective action can only be assured by decision procedures grounded in unanimity. (f) Every agreement that meets the unanimity criteria is, by definition, an improvement. (g) However, the legitimacy of collective action in general and constitutional governance in particular requires that individuals be fundamentally equal in their roles as citizens, both at the constitutional level of choice and in the civil society framed by the constitution chosen. This paper shows how these ideas emerged in Buchanan's research and are used to develop a very rich constitutional political economy.

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  • Roger D. Congleton, 2013. "The Contractarian Constitutional Political Economy of James Buchanan," Working Papers 13-08, Department of Economics, West Virginia University.
    • Handle: RePEc:wvu:wpaper:13-08
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    Cited by:

    1. Mingyu Liu, 2024. "Structural and functional analysis of Buchanan’s constitutional contract," Palgrave Communications, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 11(1), pages 1-8, December.
    2. Michael C. Munger, 2022. "Giants among us: do we need a new antitrust paradigm?," Constitutional Political Economy, Springer, vol. 33(4), pages 445-460, December.
    3. Kevin Vallier, 2018. "Social contracts for real moral agents: a synthesis of public reason and public choice approaches to constitutional design," Constitutional Political Economy, Springer, vol. 29(2), pages 115-136, June.
    4. Charles Delmotte & Malte Dold, 2022. "Dynamic preferences and the behavioral case against sin taxes," Constitutional Political Economy, Springer, vol. 33(1), pages 80-99, March.
    5. Roger D. Congleton, 2020. "Ethics and good governance," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 184(3), pages 379-398, September.
    6. Manuel Woersdoerfer, 2023. "AI Ethics and Ordoliberalism 2.0: Towards A 'Digital Bill of Rights'," Papers 2311.10742, arXiv.org.
    7. Gustavo Nunes Mourão & Eduardo Angeli, 2022. "A classification of the methodology of James M. Buchanan from a multidisciplinary perspective," Constitutional Political Economy, Springer, vol. 33(4), pages 413-432, December.
    8. Brian Kogelmann, 2015. "Modeling the individual for constitutional choice," Constitutional Political Economy, Springer, vol. 26(4), pages 455-474, December.
    9. Klump Rainer & Wörsdörfer Manuel, 2015. "Paternalistic Economic Policies: Foundations, Implications and Critical Evaluations," ORDO. Jahrbuch für die Ordnung von Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft, De Gruyter, vol. 66(1), pages 27-60, January.
    10. Ryan H. Murphy, 2019. "Governance and the dimensions of autocracy," Constitutional Political Economy, Springer, vol. 30(2), pages 131-148, June.

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