Buchanan, Popular Myths, and the Social Responsibility of Economists

Abstract

This article presents and discusses “The ‘Politics’ of Economic Policy,” an essay that remains unpublished and that James Buchanan wrote in 1953. In this essay, Buchanan, for the first time, claimed that politicians and bureaucrats are not benevolent despots—it was not an assumption. This helps to understand that Buchanan had abandoned the “romantic” belief that politicians were acting for the interest of the public early in his career, much earlier than usually acknowledged and even earlier than his first works in “nonmarket decision‐making.” Beyond this historical insight, we show that Buchanan wrote his article in response or echo to Knight's “The Rôle of Principles in Economics and Politics” (1951). Comparing Buchanan's and Knight's texts, we show that Buchanan adopted a Knightian perspective while criticizing Knight and departing from his views. Of particular importance is what Buchanan wrote on how economists should frame their policy recommendations and on how they may need to avoid very sophisticated theories.

Disguised Terrorism Versus Political and Economic Failures- Which Diagnosis Do We Need to Recognize? 205 Countries in Two Decades of Analysis

“…Alber (2018) Ironically, some would argue that democracy, derived from the work on the Economic Theory of Democracy by Anthony (1957), or the work of James and Gordon (1962) authors of the Logical Foundations of Constitutional Democracy (1962), and/or from the work of the Intuitional Economists of the public economics such as Anthony Downs (1957) author of An Economic Theory of Democracy, can lead to "Market Failures" and/or to Economic Injustices. Very recently, (Marciano, 2020) but especially (Tusalem, 2015) argue that nascent democracies may be disadvantaged in promoting political stability because of some pressures from some groups or from populist demands on governments and that can generate significant social rigidities. They even claim that nascent democracies can witness large-scale violence if an economic, social or ethnic minority precipitate to control most of the wealth and power.…”