Retrospectives: James Buchanan: Clubs and Alternative Welfare Economics

James Buchanan wrote “An Economic Theory of Clubs” and invented clubs to support a form of welfare economics in which there is no social welfare function (SWF) and individual utility functions cannot be “read” by external observers. Clubs were a means to allow the implementation of individualized prices for public goods and services and to allow each individual to pay exactly the amount he wants to pay. He developed this project to answer and counter Paul Samuelson's analysis of public goods, in which social welfare functions play a crucial role. Buchanan and Samuelson disagreed over the allocation of the costs of the public good to each individual. To Buchanan, it was by relying on individual's preferences. To Samuelson, by using a SWF. Buchanan's clubs are thus foreign and incompatible with the traditional Samuelson-style public economics in which they are used.

James Buchanan, Gordon Tullock, and the “Radically Irresponsible” One Person, One Vote Decisions

James Buchanan and Gordon Tullock took a keen interest in the United States Supreme Court’s reapportionment decisions of the 1960s, which established a “one person, one vote” standard for state legislative apportionment. This paper traces the long arc of Buchanan and Tullock’s opposition to the “one person, one vote” standard. The Calculus of Consent offers a highly qualified efficiency argument against “one person, one vote,” but over time Buchanan and Tullock grew even more vocally critical of the decisions. Buchanan ultimately advocated a constitutional amendment overturning “one person, one vote” in a private set of recommendations to Congressional Republicans. This paper additionally assesses Tullock’s 1987 complaint that scholars and judges neglected The Calculus of Consent’s analysis of reapportionment. A review of the reapportionment literature between 1962 and 1987 demonstrates that while the book was frequently cited, the literature generally ignored its analysis of the efficiency of apportionment standards.

“A Quite Similar Enterprise … Interpreted Quite Differently”? James Buchanan, John Rawls and the Politics of the Social Contract

A striking aspect of the initial reception of John Rawls is that he was embraced by leading market-liberal theorists such as Friedrich Hayek and James Buchanan. This article investigates the reasons for the free-market right's sympathetic interest in the early Rawls by providing a historical account of the dialogue between Rawls and his key neoliberal interlocutor, James Buchanan. We set out the common intellectual context, notably the influence of Frank Knight, that framed the initial work of both Buchanan and Rawls and brought them together as seeming allies during the early 1960s. We then analyze a significant theoretical divergence between the two in the 1970s related to their contrasting responses to the politics of those years and to differences over the importance of ideal theory in political thought. The exchanges between Buchanan and Rawls demonstrate that Rawlsian liberalism and neoliberalism initially emerged as entwined critiques of mid-twentieth-century political economy but could not sustain that alliance when faced by the new claims for civil and social rights that became a marked feature of politics after the 1960s.

Hacia una teoría de los bienes públicos como bienes políticos y el rol estatal

In this work Public Goods are analyzed from the point of view of their definition as «non-excludable» and «non-rivalry» in order to show the contradictions it entails. Also we propose Political Goods as a proper name in order to define those goods provided by the state apart from the basic ones (security and justice) and therefore to show how these are the result of political pressure and arbitrary decisions by bureaucrats (which is studied in the works of James Buchanan on Democracy). Finally we present a possible justification for the provision of Security and Justice by the State based on Economic Theory (according to the theories of Robert Nozick), which would show that the State could be the ideal agent to provide these goods, while at the same time avoid using the contradictory and ambiguous category of Public Goods. Key words: Public Goods, Praxeology, Ludwig von Mises, Public Choice School, James Buchanan, Minimal State, Robert Nozick, Spontaneous Order, Created Order, Externalities. JEL Classification: H40, H41, H42, D62. Resumen: En el presente trabajo se realiza un análisis de los Bienes Públicos desde su definición de «No Exclusión» y «No Rivalidad» para demostrar las contradicciones en que incurre la misma. A su vez se propone como término correcto el de Bienes Políticos para ilustrar que aquellas funciones que el Estado adopta por encima de las básicas (seguridad y justicia) son fruto de presiones políticas y la arbitrariedad de los funcionarios (lo cual es ilustrado con las teorías de James Buchanan sobre la Democracia). Finalmente se procede a brindar una posible justificación de la provisión estatal de Segu - ridad y Justicia bajo los fundamentos de la Teoría Económica (en base a las teorías de Robert Nozick), lo cual demostraría que estos son bienes para cuya provisión el Estado podría ser el agente o árbitro ideal, sin necesidad de recurrir a la categoría contradictoria y ambigua de Bienes Públicos. Palabras clave: Bienes Públicos, Praxeología, Ludwig von Mises, Escuela de la Elección Pública, James Buchanan, Estado Mínimo, Robert Nozick, Orden Espontáneo, Orden Creado, Externalidades. Clasificación JEL: H40, H41, H42, D62.