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Economics is frequently criticised for relying on a narrow and limited view of human beings. This may be particularly true of economic analyses of non-market decisions in which individuals often appear reduced to self-interested automata who maximise a given objective function. In this article, we show that the approach of one of the founders of public choice and constitutional political economy, James Buchanan, contradicts this view. Even though he assumed individuals were rational and self-interested, Buchanan nevertheless had a sophisticated view of human nature. He distinguished between a natural and artifactual man, but also between (what we term) symmetrical and asymmetrical man. This is not only important to demonstrate the richness of the ontology of an influential economist, but also because, we also show, Buchanan's public choice and constitutional economics cannot be understood without a reference to this ontology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite his significant influence, the work of James M. Buchanan has been largely absent from the field of intellectual history and from recent attempts by historians to establish the intellectual origins of neoliberalism. The article explores the nature of Buchanan's intellectual project by focussing on the relationship of his thought to the 'Italian tradition', which he encountered during his year in Italy as a Fulbright Fellow. It is a tradition that encompasses both classical works of public finance and the 'elite theory' associated with Pareto and Mosca. An awareness of the importance of this Italian year helps us to reframe Buchanan's intellectual development. Furthermore, while he strove to exclude analyses of socio-economic power from his work, its proximity to a tradition in which this was a core concern throws into relief the points at which he chose not to pursue such considerations, forcing us to ask why. This article provides an answer. It concludes that, despite his efforts, Buchanan was forced to confront the reality of private power, as can be seen in his proposals for a confiscatory rate of inheritance tax. A response is also made to the controversy associated with Nancy MacLean's recent work on Buchanan. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While Buchanan is best known for the economics of politics and constitutions, his seminal contributions to this field are but one branch of his more underlying methodology and approach to doing social science. Buchanan's fundamental project was to re-orient economics and social science toward an analysis of symbiotic exchange (catallactics) rather than of antiseptic allocation (optimization). The most definite statement of this contribution lies in Buchanan's 1963 presidential address to the Southern Economic Association, "What should economists do?" which was later expanded into a book of the same title. This paper seeks to draw attention to several of Buchanan's more recent but lesser known articles where he fully develops this theme. He calls on economists to rediscover Adam Smith's "elementary notion" about the division of labor and the extent of the market, and he professes the notion of "generalized increasing returns" as a mechanism for economists to rediscover their Scottish Enlightenment roots within the neoclassical framework. In this same vein, we also discuss how Buchanan's rediscovery might apply to two prominent and ongoing twenty-first century issues, trade restrictions and populism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper uses network analysis to measure the position and influence of two prominent academics, James M. Buchanan and Gordon Tullock, founders of Public Choice theory. First, an account of their parallel lives is given. Second, a review of the literature and of the standard centrality measures is provided, insisting on their relevance to assess an author’s importance in a given network. Third, detailing the publication records and, overall, co-authorship networks of the two scholars, their respective influence is analyzed through the lens of network analysis. Their academic genealogy is also explored. It is shown in particular that: (1) Buchanan and Tullock’s careers followed parallel paths and co-founded Public Choice theory and the journal of the same name, although the two had few common works; (2) though being apparently very similar as to their centrality in the co-authoring network under scrutiny, their ego-networks are structured very differently, revealing diverse positions in the field and, thus, different influence on the discipline. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, which is concerned with philosophical methodology as it might affect social science and ethics, the endeavor is to explore the depth and implications of Buchanan's interest in Spinoza. After establishing their connection, the paper explores the parallels between Spinoza's 'dualism' and Buchanan's own dualism and how that can shed light on Buchanan's distinction between constitutional and operational modalities. Given their analogous perspectives, the paper then considers the possibility of dimensional shifts in the dualism, such that what was once a constitutional perspective becomes operational and how that ability to shift might affect various research agendas in the social sciences and ethics. Finally, we raise the question of how separate are the two levels and can they be brought together. In a Spinozistic framework, they ultimately would collapse into a monism, but the conclusion here is that for Buchanan there must always be a gap between them. As a result, the effort to resolve the tension between the dimensions may signal future research agendas in ethics and political economy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article discusses the methodological foundations of Buchanan’s constitutional political economy. We argue that Buchanan is a constitutional economist because he is an economist or a political economist. In other words, Buchanan is a constitutional economist—he insists on the necessity of focusing on constitutions and to analyze the “rules of the social game”—because he defines economics as a science of exchange. Buchanan’s definition of economics is not only specific, it is also opposed to the definition of economics that other economists retain and, above all, opposed to the definition of economics that many public choice theorists use. The latter have, in effect, adopted the Robbins 1932 definition of economics as a science of choice that Buchanan criticizes and rejects. Buchanan’s constitutional economics can be a branch of public choice only under certain conditions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]