Economics of collective choice—the missing dimension of constitutional theory

Excerpt

Four questions have preoccupied the minds of constitutional theorists, a breed of political theorists who come from a background of positive constitutional law. The first concerns constitutional history. How did the state, in its legislative, executive and judicial aspects arise? The second concerns the justification of authority. How can a small group of persons, whether elected or not, justify its claim to coerce others? The third is the question of fundamental or ‘natural’ rights of the person. Do individuals have moral claims to inviolable rights and freedoms? The fourth concerns the rules and principles of a good constitution. The Calculus of Consent offers much in each of these fields of inquiry. Its greatest value, in my view, lies in its scientific examination of a layer of the constitutional system largely neglected by constitutional lawyers and theorists. This is the realm of public finance that determines the distribution of benefits and costs among the members of society. In doing so, Buchanan and Tullock overturned two of the orthodoxies of constitutional theory: the sacrosanctity of simple majority rule and the myth of the social will. In its demonstration of how simple majority systems work, the authors of the Calculus supplied a powerful case for the revival of the checks and balances of classical constitutional theory which, in recent decades, have frayed. The Calculus confirmed many of my intuitions and provided a series of insights into the operation of democracy that has since informed my work in constitutional theory. …