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Although Milton Friedman's mid‐1970s involvement with Pinochet's Chile has generated much controversy, the claim that James M. Buchanan was similarly eager to provide Pinochet's military dictatorship with early 1980s policy advice is increasingly reported as an established fact in the vast scholarly literature on neoliberalism. This article invokes a wealth of previously ignored primary source material that sheds significant new light on Buchanan's early 1980s involvement with Chile. In particular, we evaluate whether Buchanan's May 1980 visit to Chile was an integral part of the Pinochet junta's late 1970s and early 1980s efforts to draft a new constitution. Similarly, we evaluate whether Buchanan's ideas had any significant influence on the views of Pedro Ibáñez and Carlos Cáceres (the most anti‐democratic members of Pinochet's Council of State and the primary hosts of Buchanan's May 1980 visit to Chile). Finally, we shed important new light on Buchanan's participation in the highly controversial late 1981 Mont Pèlerin Society meeting in Chile. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this paper is to present "What Should Economists Do?", an article written by James Buchanan and published in 1964, in an historical perspective. We put forward an important point, namely the opposition with Ludwig von Mises, and Buchanan's attempt at differentiating his approach from Mises. Instead of in addition to Robbins, that he nominally targeted, Buchanan was actually criticizing Mises. Buchanan thus defined economics in a very specific way, as a science that studies exchange but only when it results from a desire (or a propensity) to exchange. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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]

In her 'Markets, repugnance, and externalities' (2022), Kimberly Krawiec notes that the so-called corruption theorists fail to provide evidence that the adoption of repugnant behaviours or commodification destroy social values. She adds that, the values repugnant behaviours are supposed to destroy may even be reinforced after a market has been created. The explanation she explores is that the creation of a market never goes without debates that allow the society to ponder the values it stands for. We suggest an alternative view on the lack of evidence Krawiec identifies. Our starting point is Krawiec's interpretation of repugnance in terms of externalities. We claim that an analysis of repugnance based on externalities requires a characterization of what an externality is, which is rarely done. We show that economists use two opposed definitions of externalities, an objective and a subjective one, and then show what it implies for an analysis of repugnance and justify why the corruption thesis is not always verified empirically. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

James M. Buchanan's politics-as-exchange retrospectively conceptualized formal institutions emerging from bilateral agreements to establish reciprocal rights and prospectively guided constitutional entrepreneurs to broker Pareto-superior reforms that had unanimous consent. Buchanan believed this conceptualization of politics-as-exchange was necessitated by his ontological–methodological individualism and would initiate a new era of consensual politics, but it is argued it led to illiberal conclusions that reflected dissonance between his Kantian individualism and Humean subjectivism. It meant, for example, that slavery was characterized as a bilateral agreement between very unequal parties and it is argued it logically implied abolition required the consent of slaveowners. But Buchanan's ontology was compatible with the introduction into his framework of a right of exit that would have differentiated between exchanges with and without the sword to produce a consistent liberal constitutionalism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A history of the transformation of public finance into public economics necessarily involves an understanding of the tension between positive and normative statements, that is a history of how public economists dealt with Robbins's requirements that economists should not make normative statements. In this paper, we propose to contribute to this history by discussing and comparing the works of two major economists of the 20th century, Paul Samuelson and James Buchanan. We show that they both use the same strategy to deal with the positive/normative tension: they adopt a reduced scale of analysis to escape normative judgements – the family for Samuelson and small groups (clubs) for Buchanan. What they do manage at this level is to create examples or models which remove that normative response from the theorist, and ascribe it to the participants. The normative views of the theorist are not involved. Yet, when one shifts back to a larger scale, the positive element of the analysis is less clear, at least in Samuelson's work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Samaritan's Dilemma has largely been investigated, frequently by assuming that Samaritans help recipients out of altruism. Yet, Buchanan did not make any behavioral assumption regarding the Samaritan's motives. In this paper, we explicitly introduce this assumption in Buchanan's original model and analyze how it changes the nature of the game. We show that altruism alone does not explain the Dilemma. A parameter that captures the disutility the Samaritan feels when helping someone who does not reciprocate her benevolence must be introduced to make sense of the different version of Buchanan's Samaritan's Dilemma. We also show that the Samaritan's Dilemma is an evolutionary stable outcome, which confirms Buchanan's intuitions. Finally, a third important point put forward in the paper is that the more altruistic are the Samaritans, the less likely it is that they will show the kind of strategic courage envisaged by Buchanan, which is one of the most important traits Samaritans should display to avoid being trapped in a Dilemma. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Perhaps the most important element of James Buchanan's contribution to constitutional economics is his differentiation between pre- and post-constitutional levels of decision-making. At first glance, a tension may appear between those two levels of analysis. In one, the rules by which we live are up for debate, allowing us to exercise our creative and imaginative capabilities in constitutional construction. In the other, the rules are viewed as fixed, and we are left simply to treat them as constraints. This paper explores three key elements of Buchanan's thought that allow him to navigate successfully between the two levels. The first is the importance of "the relatively absolute absolute", a concept learned from his mentor, Frank Knight. The second is Buchanan's approach to "truth judgments" in politics, and their status in our political discussions. Third, we draw on Buchanan's insights in his 1959 paper "Positive Economics, Welfare Economics, and Political Economy" to show how political economists should participate in this decision-making process—not as expert philosopher-kings, but as co-equals with their fellow citizens. Finally, we illustrate Buchanan's system of thought in action by presenting two case studies: Virginia education policy in the wake of Brown v. Board of Education, and the 1928 Supreme Court ruling in Miller v. Schoene. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Rejecting all knowledge claims concerning right and wrong in matters practical James Buchanan concurred with legal positivism that invalid law cannot be identified by its substantive content but only by an inherited defect in its factual creation. Beyond correct creation Buchanan proposed as a quasi-natural law constraint that unanimity in the shadow of individual veto power must at least be conceivable if a norm is to be law. The emerging hybrid conception of constitutional law is symptomatic for Buchanan's never-ending but ultimately futile efforts to incorporate Kantian ideals of interpersonal respect into constitutional economics without imposing them as personal values. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

RESUMO Dado um elemento significativo da verdade em “Escolha Pública”, um elemento modesto deve ser encontrado quando uma abordagem semelhante é feita ao comportamento dos cientistas econômicos. Harry Johnson encontrou isso em “A revolução keynesiana e a contra-revolução monetarista”. Depois dele, encontro mais na própria “Revolução” da Escolha Pública. As visões, suposições e métodos básicos desses últimos são avaliados dentro de seu fluxo de tempo e espaço. Essa abordagem é um complemento à Sociologia do Conhecimento (Thomas Kuhn) e pode ser tomada como uma Economia do Conhecimento embrionária (Neoclássica). Requisitos para o sucesso de revoluções científicas é o tema.

Bioethicists and philosophers dominate the on-going debate on human enhancement. They have debated the definition of human enhancement as well as the potential impacts of human enhancement technologies (such as pharmaceutical enhancements or pre-natal selection). These discussions have percolated, through bioethics bodies and bioethics recommendations, policy makers and have eventually been translated into policy. While some suggestions have been based largely in Western liberal democracies, others have deliberated the geopolitical consequences of human enhancement technologies. This paper argues that the present debate currently lacks perspectives from developing countries. It begins by introducing the current debate on human enhancement and recognizes Allen Buchanan's well-raised concerns on how these technologies may potentially cause new injustices for low- and middle-income countries ('developing countries'). It then provides two arguments calling for further research into human enhancement from the perspective of developing countries. First, this paper will argue that the current frames with which enhancement technologies are viewed are inherently neoliberal and require change. The second argument shows how the potential impacts of human enhancement technologies in developing countries have not been fully realized by analyzing how human enhancement technologies will impact Thailand, a developing country. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

América Latina está atrapada en un “Momento Gramsciano”, cuando lo viejo se desvanece, pero lo nuevo no logra nacer. En este interregno -como nos advertía Gramsci- es casi inevitable que aparezca “una gran variedad de síntomas dañinos”. Es como si las brujas de Macbeth nos hubiesen profetizado: vivirán empantanados entre un modelo neoliberal que perdió toda legitimidad y discursos progresistas que no logran generar suficiente credibilidad. En lo económico esto significa que además de tener que enfrentar la pandemia sanitaria, también tenemos que desafiar una de las endemias de la región: su falta de imaginación en materias de política económica. La primera hace estragos creando desafíos hasta hace poco inimaginables, los cuales inevitablemente chocan con los obstáculos que pone la segunda. Y así nos seguimos hundiendo en las arenas movedizas de la inercia; mientras tanto, el susto (en muchos el pánico) de una salida desordenada de la crisis lleva a algunos a idealizar una opción tipo “nueva socialdemocracia europea”. Esto es, mientras no toquemos la estructura de acumulación rentista o la tributaria, se podría permitir algo más de protección social (financiada, por supuesto, con deuda en lugar de impuestos), para así poder garantizar un mínimo de paz social y un asomo de equidad. En otras palabras, como en la letra de la canción Hotel California, seguimos siendo “prisioneros de nuestras propias cadenas” -y no logramos romperlas-. El gran desafío de este momento histórico es liberar nuestra imaginación social.

The argument of this paper is centred on early modern Tacitism and emergent political theory in Ben Jonson's England and his play Sejanus His Fall. Early modern political theory displayed a shift from a Christian humanist framework to what has been termed as Tacitean politics. In this paper, I will be discussing how Ben Jonson's Sejanus His Fall comments on current political affairs via contemporary Tacitism and particularly George Buchanan's political theory, especially his oeuvre De Jure Regni Apud Scotos; A Dialogue Concerning the Rights of the Crown in Scotland. Jonsonian scholarship has successfully discussed Ben Jonson's sources and focused mainly on the famous Flemish influence of Justus Lipsius's Tacitism but has overlooked George Buchanan's thought and his importance in the drama of Ben Jonson and his play Sejanus His Fall. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Starting from a behavioural-economics critique of standard rational choice theory Sugden seeks to restate the case for classical liberalism. That case has three strands: a refutation of libertarian paternalism; a restatement of standard welfare theorems of economics in terms of opportunity sets; and underlining the role that 'exchange' plays in supporting civil liberal society. We explore questions about Sugden's arguments in connection to all three strands and to relevant pieces of Adam Smith and James Buchanan to which Sugden appeals. Without substantive assumptions Sugden either adopts a view from nowhere or has to implicitly rely on non-negotiable interpersonal respect norms. [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]

All of the major religious confessions existing today have outlasted every single secular ruling regime known in human history. That observation poses an interesting puzzle for social scientists interested in institutional durability. If religions can be seen as governance institutions that organize and coordinate people's lives, why have they outlasted secular states? Despite claims regarding the inevitability of secularization, religious institutions refuse to fade from the social landscape and in many places are thriving and expanding. I argue that the durability of religious institutions relative to secular governing regimes is related to the unique ability of religions to avoid the public choice "paradox of government" as laid out by James Buchanan. More precisely, religious institutions are more resilient because they effectively provide vital public goods, involve "citizens" in the process of governance at the local level, and provide a credible neutral arbitrator for violations of the governing covenant. A further argument is made for the efficiency of religious institutions relative to states based on the smaller deadweight losses associated with participatory governance. Finally, state-sponsored confessions expose themselves to the paradox of government and become less effective in pursuing their missions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In a number of works, James M. Buchanan set out a proposal for a 'demogrant'—a form of universal basic income that applied the principles of generality and non discrimination to the tax and the transfer sides of the scheme and was to be implemented as a constitutional rule outside the realm of day-to-day politics. The demogrant has received surprisingly little scholarly attention, but this article locates it in Buchanan's broader constitutional political economy project and shows it was a logical application of his theoretical framework to the problem of inefficient and unfair welfare systems when reform to the basic institutions of majoritarian democracy was not forthcoming. The demogrant aims to end the problems of majority cycling and rent seeking that plague contemporary welfare states and therefore offers a model of welfare without rent seeking—a constitutional welfare state. We compare Buchanan's demogrant model to other universal basic income and negative income tax models and consider the most important criticisms. We conclude that rescuing the demogrant model from relative obscurity would be a fruitful future task of applied constitutional political economy and public choice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In his book "Community of Advantage," Robert Sugden elaborates upon his opportunity criterion that is supposed to be rooted in economics' liberal tradition, while also being compatible with basic behavioral economics insights, particularly into the inconsistency of real-world preferences. Some missing parts are identified in that criterion, and an alternative criterion is suggested, which is informed by Buchanan's notion of individual self-constitution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Performances of Latin drama had become a widespread phenomenon in European schools by the middle of the sixteenth century. The potential for these dramas to have a significant impact on the students who performed or watched these plays was recognised at the time. Memories of participating in these performances would linger in the pupils’ minds, as Michel de Montaigne clearly shows in his own reminiscences of his leading roles undertaken at the Collège de Guyenne in Bordeaux. The lessons learnt in performance were thought to be thoroughly complementary to the program of classroom Latin education across Europe. But learning in performance, this article contends, also yielded crucially different lessons as well, not least concerning the manipulation of sentiment through rhetoric and the often violently differing results in action. In this article I examine the 1543 production of George Buchanan's translation of Euripides' Medea from four angles: its `Greekness', the Latinity of the translation, the pedagogical context for the performance, and the medium of performance itself. Using these four angles to create a matrix of meaning, I argue that Latin translations such as Buchanan's warrant greater appreciation than has been awarded them so far, and demonstrate the potential that lies within these understudied texts.

Latin America is trapped in a "Gramscian Moment", when the old fades, but the new fails to be born. In this interregnum, as Gramsci warned us, it is almost inevitable that "a wide variety of harmful symptoms will appear". It is as if the Macbeth witches had prophesied to us: you will live bogged down between a neoliberal model that lost all legitimacy and progressive discourses that fail to generate enough credibility. Economically, this means that along with having to face the pandemic, we also have to challenge one of the endemic illnesses in the region: the lack of imagination in matters of economic policy. The former wreaks havoc, creating challenges until recently unimaginable, which inevitably collide with the obstacles posed by the latter. And so we continue to sink into the quicksand of inertia; meanwhile, the anxiety (in many the panic) of a disorderly exit from the crisis leads some to idealize a "new European social democracy"-style solution. That is, as long as we do not touch either the rentier structure of accumulation or that of taxation, some extra social protection would be welcomed (if financed, of course, with debt rather than taxes) in order to guarantee a minimum of social peace and a hint of equity. In other words, as in the lyrics of the Hotel California song: "We are all just prisoners here, of our own device"--and we still can't think of a way to break our chains--. The great challenge of this historical moment is to free our social imagination. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Buchanan's first writings about federalism and fiscal justice were "'Federalism': One Barrier to Labor Mobility" and "A Theory of Financial Balance in a Federal State," two term papers that he wrote before his dissertation and that have never been discussed before. Studying them allows us to complete the recent literature on the origins of Buchanan's fiscal federalism. We show that most of Buchanan's ideas about fiscal equity were already in these works, and also that Buchanan made other claims and used other arguments – about mobility, for instance – that were absent from the dissertation but remained important to him for a long time. We also analyze these essays in the context in which Buchanan was at that time, namely the economics department of the University of Chicago. We show how Buchanan fed on, not to say was influenced by, the courses for which he wrote these essays. This allows us to shed new light on the role Theodore Schultz, D. Gale Johnson, Henry Simons, and Roy Blough, played at the beginning of Buchanan's career. [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]

James M. Buchanan cited the American Founding as an important inspiration for his constitutional vision. Buchanan and the Founders shared a belief in the moral equality of persons and a conviction that social order could be built upon a nexus of contract and exchange. The early revolutionaries were inspired by the classical republican ideal of impartial government serving the public interest, but Buchanan and the later Founders did not believe that relying on political actors to pursue the common good would avert tyranny. Buchanan's insistence on unanimous constitutional agreement highlights the fact that the Constitutional Convention did not obtain the consent of the black Americans who constituted close to one-fifth of the population, but to whom the Founders did not extend the principle of moral equality. Accordingly, Buchanan's work leads to an appreciation of the Founders as an archetype of the constitutional mentality that he advocated throughout his work, but also to an understanding that the Founding fell short of his ideal of genuinely consensual politics. The practical import of Buchanan's work therefore is to facilitate the evaluation of real-world politics—in this case, America's Founding and subsequent political development—and to point the way towards future reforms informed by a constitutional mentality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this paper is to show that, at the very beginning of his career, Buchanan was interested in concrete issues related to the economic situation in the South rather than with abstract and philosophical works in public finance. We examine the published and unpublished articles, reviews and replies that Buchanan wrote between 1949 and 1952 on federalism. By putting what Buchanan wrote in the intellectual, academic and political context of the period, we put forward four factors which we believe are important to understand Buchanan's ideas. First, Buchanan defended the intervention of the federal government to redistribute, in the form of equalizing grants, income from rich to poor regions. Second, as a consequence, for Buchanan, such redistribution was an ethical necessity that should precede any consideration of efficiency. Even more important, fiscal justice was a precondition without which a competitive or free market system could not function properly. Third, at least during that period, Buchanan appears to have been interested primarily in practical, concrete problems, rather than in pure and abstract questions. Finally, a fourth and crucial point is that Buchanan insisted on the need for federal government intervention to industrialize the South, a stance that stands in stark contrast to policies the Nashville Agrarians defended. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of ORDO: Jahrbuch für die Ordnung von Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft is the property of De Gruyter and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Incompetent patients between advance directives and the objection to moral authority The present paper aims at focusing on some of the arguments for or against the possibility for incompetent individuals to exercise their will through living will. After providing clarification about the specific subject of investigation (of the paper) and the context in which informed consent has raised and developed, I analyze the objections to the extension View argument, and the counter-arguments by Buchanan, Brock and Brody. Finally, I formulate an argument in support of the thesis that the will of the patient is not betrayed by the use of any self-determination paper which, on the contrary, constitutes an extension of the informed consent principle in situations of incapacity.

There exists a distinction between 'law and economics' and the 'economic analysis of law'. The former, corresponding to Coase's approach, consists in taking legal rules into account insofar as they influence economic activities. The latter, associated to Posner's name, consists in using economics to analyze legal problems. Methodologically speaking, if one admits that the economic analysis of law consists in using economic tools to analyze legal problems, Calabresi's own work must be classified as such. However, Calabresi has always insisted that his own approach differs from Posner's economic analysis of law. In this paper, we take the opportunity of Calabresi's new book—The Future of Law and Economics—to revisit Calabresi's approach to law and economics. In his book, Calabresi explains that the economic analysis of law is unsatisfactory because economics is too narrow. He insists on the need to amplify economic analysis by: first, adopting a more realistic approach à la Coase; second, taking merit goods into account; and third, including individuals' propensity to be altruistic. We analyze these three aspects and show that it leads to a certain ambiguity in terms of the distinction between 'law and economics' and the 'economic analysis of law'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Nancy MacLean's book, Democracy in Chains, raised questions about James M. Buchanan's commitment to democracy. This chapter investigates the relationship of classical liberalism in general and of Buchanan in particular to democratic theory. Contrary to the simplistic classical liberal juxtaposition of "coercion vs. consent," there have been from Antiquity onward voluntary contractarian defenses of non-democratic government and even slavery - all little noticed by classical liberal scholars who prefer to think of democracy as just "government by the consent of the governed" and slavery as being inherently coercive. Historically, democratic theory had to go beyond that simplistic notion of democracy to develop a critique of consentbased non-democratic government, for example, the Hobbesian pactum subjectionis. That critique was based firstly on the distinction between contracts or constitutions of alienation (translatio) versus delegation (concessio). Then, the contracts of alienation were ruled out based on the theory of inalienable rights that descends from the reformation doctrine of inalienability of conscience down through the Enlightenment to modern times in the abolitionist and democratic movements. While he developed no theory of inalienability, the mature Buchanan explicitly allowed only a constitution of delegation, contrary to many modern classical liberals or libertarians who consider the choice between consent-based democratic or non-democratic governments (e.g., private cities or shareholder states) to be a pragmatic one. But Buchanan seems to not even realize that his at-most delegation dictum would also rule out the employer-employee or human rental contract which is a contract of alienation "within the scope of the employment". [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Democracy in Chains, Nancy MacLean draws attention to the influence that James M. Buchanan's work has had on the political economic discourse of the past half century. Buchanan and his collaborators in the Virginia Political Economy tradition have provided intellectual firepower for efforts to delegitimize democratically sanctioned policies aimed at alleviating the dysfunctional consequences of market activity. While MacLean's account contains some welldocumented inaccuracies, her characterization of Buchanan's agenda is broadly accurate. This chapter assesses Buchanan's economics in light of the themes raised by MacLean. His work, we shall argue, is a modern manifestation of what Marx termed "vulgar economy," that is, ruling-class ideology posing as science. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of bilig: Journal of Social Sciences of the Turkish World is the property of bilig: Journal of Social Sciences of the Turkish World and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

James Buchanan's views on public finance have already been analyzed and they are quite well known, as are their origins and roots. However, nothing has ever been said about why Buchanan chose public finance in the first place. The first goal of this paper is to show that Buchanan had made this choice before arriving at Chicago. We show how Carlton C. Sims and Charles P. White influenced him. We also show, by analyzing Buchanan's M.A. thesis, that he was not only interested in public finance but was also primarily concerned by ethical questions and defended a bureaucratic centralized solution to solve the problem he was discussing - how to share the benefits collected from a gasoline tax among Counties. This helps to understand that Buchanan did not choose to study public finance to learn how to fight government intervention. Quite the contrary: it was to legitimate it. Second, we also demonstrate that a lot of the ideas that will matter for Buchanan in his career - the importance of ethics and the principle of an equal treatment for equals, the need to link taxes to benefits, the importance to adapt the scale of provision of a public good to the type of public good - were already present in this first work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Nobel Prize winning economist James M. Buchanan has repeatedly argued that the "political economist should not act as if he or she were providing advice to a benevolent despot" (Boettke Constitutional Political Economy, 25, 110-124, 2014: 112), but an increasingly influential body of scholarship argues that Buchanan provided a wealth of early 1980s policy advice to Augusto Pinochet's military dictatorship in Chile (e.g., Fischer 2009; Maclean 2017). In particular, Buchanan reportedly provided an analytical defense of military rule to a predominantly Chilean audience when he visited the country in late 1981. This paper draws upon largely ignored archival evidence from the Buchanan House Archives and Chilean primary source material to assess whether Buchanan provided a defense of Pinochet's "capitalist fascism" (Samuelson 1983) or whether he defended democracy when he visited Chile in 1981. Aside from the importance of this for assessing Buchanan's own legacy, his constitutional political economy arguments presented in Chile also provide an interesting and distinct perspective on the connection between democracy and growth, which remains highly relevant to current debates. Despite a general agreement about the desirability of democracy, the view that authoritarian regimes can spur "growth miracles", or might even be a necessary stage in political-economic development, still has prominent supporters (e.g. Sachs 2012). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Voters in the industrialised countries are increasingly expressing dissatisfaction by dissenting from the established political parties and candidates. Based on the concepts of justice by Hayek, Rawls and Buchanan, we argue that the growing dissatisfaction is rooted in the asymmetric pattern of monetary policies since the mid‐1980s for two reasons. First, the structurally declining interest rates and the unconventional monetary policy measures have granted privileges to specific groups. Second, the increasingly expansionary monetary policies have negative growth effects, which have reduced the scope for compensation of the ones excluded from the privileges. As a result, the acceptance of the prevailing economic and political order is undermined and political instability increases. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]