Government Failure in the Farm Bill

Concatenation of Circumstances or Historical Regularity?

Voprosy Ekonomiki ◽

10.32609/0042-8736-2009-7-75-84 ◽

2009 ◽

pp. 75-84

Author(s):

V. Popov

Keyword(s):

Transition Economies ◽

Government Expenditure ◽

Previous History ◽

Shock Therapy ◽

Economic Liberalization ◽

Institutional Capacity ◽

Government Failure ◽

Stage Of Development ◽

Optimal Policies ◽

Cis Countries

Why have many transition economies succeeded by pursuing policies which are so different from the radical economic liberalization (shock therapy) that is normally credited for the economic success of countries of Central Europe? First, optimal policies are context dependent, they are specific for each stage of development and what worked in Slovenia cannot be expected to work in Mongolia. Second, even for the countries with the same level of development reforms that are necessary to stimulate growth are different; they depend on the previous history and on the path chosen. The reduction of government expenditure as a share of GDP did not undermine significantly the institutional capacity of the state in China, but in Russia and other CIS countries it turned out to be ruinous. The art of the policymaker is to create markets without causing government failure, as happened in many CIS countries.

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Implications

10.3366/edinburgh/9780748678662.003.0011 ◽

2017 ◽

Author(s):

Karl Widerquist ◽

Grant S. McCall

Keyword(s):

Property Rights ◽

The State ◽

Natural Property ◽

Government Failure ◽

State Of Nature ◽

Best Response ◽

Lockean Proviso ◽

Definition Of ◽

Taking Action ◽

Disadvantaged People

Earlier chapters of this book found that the Hobbesian hypothesis is false; the Lockean proviso is unfulfilled; contemporary states and property rights systems fail to meet the standard that social contract and natural property rights theories require for their justification. This chapter assesses the implications of those findings for the two theories. Section 1 argues that, whether contractarians accept or reject these findings, they need to clarify their argument to remove equivocation. Section 2 invites efforts to refute this book’s empirical findings. Section 3 discusses a response open only to property rights theorists: concede this book’s empirical findings and blame government failure. Section 4 considers the argument that this book misidentifies the state of nature. Section 5 considers a “bracketing strategy,” which admits that observed stateless societies fit the definition of the state of nature, but argues that they are not the relevant forms of statelessness today. Section 6 discusses the implications of accepting both the truth and relevance of the book’s findings, concluding that the best response is to fulfil the Lockean proviso by taking action to improve the lives of disadvantaged people.

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