Richard E. Wagner: Deficits, debt, and democracy: wrestling with tragedy on the fiscal commons

Excerpt

Sequels have a tough row to hoe. They have to simultaneously move things forward and capture the magic of their predecessors without simply reprising the same material. Richard Wagner’s Deficits, Debt, and Democracy: Wrestling with Tragedy on the Fiscal Commons is essentially a sequel to his 2007 book, Fiscal Sociology and the Theory of Public Finance. The central message of Fiscal Sociology is that fiscal phenomena—taxes, spending, budgets, deficits, etc.—neither map onto the normative criteria of traditional public finance (e.g., social welfare functions or corrections of market failures) nor onto conscious objects of choice (e.g., a principle’s agent or a median voter). Rather, fiscal phenomena emerge as spontaneous outcomes of interaction between individuals and groups pursuing several ends within a framework of rules constituting a polity. Deficits, Debt, and Democracy applies that conceptual framework to the narrower topic of public debt. …