From The Calculus of Consent to public choice and to public economics in a public choice approach

Excerpt

1. The Calculus of Consent did not merely originate a new area of theoretical research in constitutional economics—per se a great achievement. It is the origin of the scientific approach of “public choice” to economics and politics, which has influenced other social sciences, such as sociology, political philosophy, and economic ethics, in which a constitutional order is paramount. When the book appeared, public economics and political economy were dominated by two streams of thought with a “paternalistic” approach, the Keynesian and the post-Pigouvian. The Keynesian macro-economic approach ignored the process of individual choice because of its technocratic view of fiscal and monetary policy. The post-Pigouvian social welfare function construct implied an omniscient and benevolent government that would maximize social welfare by assigning different coefficients of marginal utility to individuals with different incomes. …