Public choice in the new century

Abstract

This special issue of Public Choice was designed to afford leading scholars the opportunity to summarize the current state of the public choice literature in key areas of public policy concern and to offer their thoughts about future directions of research. By laying out public choice frameworks for analyzing some of the major challenges confronting democratic governments at the dawn of the 21st century, the issue’s overarching goal is to demonstrate the vibrancy and continuing relevance of the public choice research program. Copyright Springer Science + Business Media, Inc. 2005

Can Democracy Educate a Society?

“…In the Public Choice tradition of the agency problem between government and citizens we now consider democratic agenda-setting with self-interested rational individuals proposing agendas (e.g. Frey, 1983;Shughart and Tollison, 2005;Mueller, 2006;Brennan, 2008;Grant, 2008). We use a standard democratic rule to determine the proposal-maker:…”