Book section · January 1, 2025
Markets can be governed through regulation or competition, with most nations blending these approaches based on specific historical paths and cultural norms. Industries with high fixed costs and economies of scale often operate as regulated utilities, whil ...
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Book section · January 1, 2025
When building any theory in social sciences, it is important to specify the unit of analysis. Possible units could be groups such as class, race, political party, or nation. Public choice emphasizes methodological individualism, where the individual is the ...
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Book section · January 1, 2025
When the 1986 Nobel Prize in Economics went to James M. Buchanan, BBC 4's Alistair Cooke-in his "Letter from America"-said: "Public Choice rests on the homely but important observation that politicians are, after all, no different than the rest of us." Thi ...
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Book section · January 1, 2025
The concept of "relatively absolute absolutes" (RAAs) combines elements of moral relativism and absolutism, allowing societies to maintain rules and norms while still questioning their validity. RAAs suggest adherence to existing conventions until there is ...
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Book section · January 1, 2025
The "status quo" is one of the most complex and important concepts in public choice. It has normative content, though not as much as some outsiders have claimed. And it plays an important technical role in social choice and constitutional rules in two prim ...
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Book section · January 1, 2023
Born in rural, segregated central Florida, I was lucky enough to go to a liberal arts college and to begin to see the connections between oppressive state action and the misery of citizens. I developed an attachment to directional, rather than destinationi ...
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Book section · January 1, 2022
Public Choice is an interdisciplinary academic approach to analyzing public institutions using rational choice reasoning. Economics examines choices among consumer goods and investments; political science considers the dynamics of group choice, given rules ...
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Book section · January 1, 2019
Political parties have been conceived variously as teams of candidates, of ideological activists, or of groups of voters. Their goals range range from winning office or controlling government to implementing a shared vision of policy. But candidates, activ ...
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Book section · January 1, 2013
Political science is the study of power, cooperation, and the uses (legitimate or otherwise) of force. Public choice is the application of a general model of rational individual choice and action to a variety of problems of groups choosing in non- market s ...
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Book section · December 1, 2008
One of the fundamental building blocks in the analysis of political phenomena is the representation of preferences. Without some means of capturing the essence of goals and trade-offs for individual choices, the mechanics of the public choice method are st ...
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Book section · December 1, 2005
Voting procedures nowadays are anachronistic on two counts: the technology of recording and counting votes often is outmoded and too much is expected from the mechanisms of democratic choice. Even if votes always and everywhere were counted perfectly, elec ...
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