Search results

Incarceration rates in many countries (the US and Australia among them) have risen spectacularly over the last twenty years and are only partially explicable by increases in crime rates. Moreover, in some countries where crime rates have shown a comparable time-path, incarceration rates have not shown the same spectacular increase. The aim of this paper is to explore the politics of punishment. The claim is that the US and Australian experiences are best understood in terms of political considerations; and that this fact lends some support to the "expressive" as distinct from the "interest" approach to electoral behaviour.

In this paper, I have advanced what I regard as the "truly rational" account of voting behaviour. This account depends essentially on the application of relative price logic in the comparative institutional context. For that logic to get purchase, certain (I think, minimal) psychological assumptions are required. These assumptions are: that people have views about matters over which they exercise negligible control; and that they have a desire to express those views. Of course, they also have a desire for their own material flourishing. This latter desire predictably plays a larger role in market settings where the individual's choices are consequential; the former play a larger role in the electoral setting where the individual's choices are not consequential. When I say "larger" here, I mean relative to markets: and I mean LARGER by a factor of many thousands! This means that homo economicus and homo politicus are likely to be rather different animals- behaviourally speaking. This difference is, I think, something that the rational choice method properly applied would predict. To deny it requires what seem to me to be very strong psychological claims about expressive and instrumental preferences - namely that they are very highly correlated. No one, to my knowledge, has provided any direct evidence on this matter. Certainly, the fact that we can find occasional instances (areas of policy say) where they do appear to be highly correlated does not, of course, establish the case one way or the other! Equally, to assert a difference in market and political behaviour does not commit one to a "wholly different model of man". On the contrary, it is this same model of man - the rational responder to incentive changes - that drives the whole analysis. I am totally committed to the logic of rationality. But I believe that much of public choice has got the "behavioural implications" of that logic just plain wrong! Voters and consumers are the same, rational persons: but the considerations that drive them in the marketplace where their choices are decisive are not the same considerations that drive them in the ballot-box. In that sense, rational choice logic predicts that homo economicus and homo politicus will exhibit different behaviours, in the sense that the kinds of considerations that weigh with them are likely to be rather different.

Reduction in carbon dioxide emissions constitutes a global public good; and hence there will be strong incentives for countries to free ride in the provision of CO2 emission reductions. In the absence of more or less binding international agreements, we would expect carbon emissions to be seriously excessive, and climate change problems to be unsolvable. Against this obvious general point, we observe many countries acting unilaterally to introduce carbon emission policies. That is itself an explanatory puzzle, and a source of possible hope. Both aspects are matters of 'how politics works' - i.e. 'public choice' problems are central. The object of this paper is to explain the phenomenon of unilateral policy action and to evaluate the grounds for 'hope'. One aspect of the explanation lies in the construction of policy instruments that redistribute strategically in favour of relevant interests. Another is the 'expressive' nature of voting and the expressive value of environmental concerns. Both elements - elite interests and popular (expressive) opinion - are quasi-constraints on politically viable policy. However, the nature of expressive concerns is such that significant reductions in real GDP are probably not sustainable in the long term - which suggests that much of the CO2 reduction action will be limited to modest reductions of a largely token character. In that sense, the grounds for hope are, although not non-existent, decidedly thin.

Public debt (as opposed to current taxation) alters the inter-temporal pattern of tax rates-it reduces current rates and increases future rates. Accordingly, whether the share of the cost of a given public expenditure is reduced or increased by debt for a given individual depends on the time profile of that individual's income (tax base) vis-à-vis others' incomes. Therefore, given the age-profile of income in virtually all Western countries, individuals will tend to be better off under current taxes the younger they are. If (as most standard models of political economy assume) individuals vote according to their economic interests, and if they are tolerably well-informed, then the pattern of support for public debt will track age. And increases in the median age of the population will lead to larger public debt. In other words, public debt policy collapses to a kind of demographic politics. This explanation may, however, be sensitive to assumptions about motives for bequest. Specifically, if bequestors seek to leave positive bequests and are motivated exclusively by the lifetime consumption of their heirs (as well as themselves) then the aged may, under plausible assumptions about the age of their heirs, prefer current taxes over debt.

This paper is an assessment of Besley's attempt to orchestrate a rapprochement between public choice theory and conventional public economics-with its characteristic normative orientation towards public policy. In this paper, I first try to set the Besley enterprise in the context of earlier work-focussing on my own work with Buchanan (The Power to Tax and The Reason of Rules). I then direct attention to three aspects of the Besley enterprise: whether selecting for competence depends on having solved the motivation problem (either by incentive or selection means), how selection mechanisms might be supported institutionally and the possibility that selection processes might create incentives at the 'dispositional' level.

In this paper, I have advanced what I regard as the "truly rational" account of voting behaviour. This account depends essentially on the application of relative price logic in the comparative institutional context. For that logic to get purchase, certain (I think, minimal) psychological assumptions are required. These assumptions are: that people have views about matters over which they exercise negligible control; and that they have a desire to express those views. Of course, they also have a desire for their own material flourishing. This latter desire predictably plays a larger role in market settings where the individual's choices are consequential; the former play a larger role in the electoral setting where the individual's choices are not consequential. When I say "larger" here, I mean relative to markets: and I mean LARGER by a factor of many thousands! This means that homo economicus and homo politicus are likely to be rather different animals- behaviourally speaking. This difference is, I think, something that the rational choice method properly applied would predict. To deny it requires what seem to me to be very strong psychological claims about expressive and instrumental preferences - namely that they are very highly correlated. No one, to my knowledge, has provided any direct evidence on this matter. Certainly, the fact that we can find occasional instances (areas of policy say) where they do appear to be highly correlated does not, of course, establish the case one way or the other! Equally, to assert a difference in market and political behaviour does not commit one to a "wholly different model of man". On the contrary, it is this same model of man - the rational responder to incentive changes - that drives the whole analysis. I am totally committed to the logic of rationality. But I believe that much of public choice has got the "behavioural implications" of that logic just plain wrong! Voters and consumers are the same, rational persons: but the considerations that drive them in the marketplace where their choices are decisive are not the same considerations that drive them in the ballot-box. In that sense, rational choice logic predicts that homo economicus and homo politicus will exhibit different behaviours, in the sense that the kinds of considerations that weigh with them are likely to be rather different.

Incarceration rates in many countries (the US and Australia among them) have risen spectacularly over the last twenty years and are only partially explicable by increases in crime rates. Moreover, in some countries where crime rates have shown a comparable time-path, incarceration rates have not shown the same spectacular increase. The aim of this paper is to explore the politics of punishment. The claim is that the US and Australian experiences are best understood in terms of political considerations; and that this fact lends some support to the "expressive" as distinct from the "interest" approach to electoral behaviour.

This paper is an assessment of Besley's attempt to orchestrate a rapprochement between public choice theory and conventional public economics-with its characteristic normative orientation towards public policy. In this paper, I first try to set the Besley enterprise in the context of earlier work-focussing on my own work with Buchanan (The Power to Tax and The Reason of Rules). I then direct attention to three aspects of the Besley enterprise: whether selecting for competence depends on having solved the motivation problem (either by incentive or selection means), how selection mechanisms might be supported institutionally and the possibility that selection processes might create incentives at the 'dispositional' level.

Reduction in carbon dioxide emissions constitutes a global public good; and hence there will be strong incentives for countries to free ride in the provision of CO2 emission reductions. In the absence of more or less binding international agreements, we would expect carbon emissions to be seriously excessive, and climate change problems to be unsolvable. Against this obvious general point, we observe many countries acting unilaterally to introduce carbon emission policies. That is itself an explanatory puzzle, and a source of possible hope. Both aspects are matters of 'how politics works' - i.e. 'public choice' problems are central. The object of this paper is to explain the phenomenon of unilateral policy action and to evaluate the grounds for 'hope'. One aspect of the explanation lies in the construction of policy instruments that redistribute strategically in favour of relevant interests. Another is the 'expressive' nature of voting and the expressive value of environmental concerns. Both elements - elite interests and popular (expressive) opinion - are quasi-constraints on politically viable policy. However, the nature of expressive concerns is such that significant reductions in real GDP are probably not sustainable in the long term - which suggests that much of the CO2 reduction action will be limited to modest reductions of a largely token character. In that sense, the grounds for hope are, although not non-existent, decidedly thin.

Public debt (as opposed to current taxation) alters the inter-temporal pattern of tax rates-it reduces current rates and increases future rates. Accordingly, whether the share of the cost of a given public expenditure is reduced or increased by debt for a given individual depends on the time profile of that individual's income (tax base) vis-à-vis others' incomes. Therefore, given the age-profile of income in virtually all Western countries, individuals will tend to be better off under current taxes the younger they are. If (as most standard models of political economy assume) individuals vote according to their economic interests, and if they are tolerably well-informed, then the pattern of support for public debt will track age. And increases in the median age of the population will lead to larger public debt. In other words, public debt policy collapses to a kind of demographic politics. This explanation may, however, be sensitive to assumptions about motives for bequest. Specifically, if bequestors seek to leave positive bequests and are motivated exclusively by the lifetime consumption of their heirs (as well as themselves) then the aged may, under plausible assumptions about the age of their heirs, prefer current taxes over debt.

Beyond program explanation -- Mental causation on the program model -- Can hunter-gatherers hear color? -- Structural irrationality -- Freedom, coercion, and discursive control -- Conversability and deliberation -- Petit's molecule -- Contestatory citizenship : deliberative denizenship -- Crime, responsibility, and institutional design -- Disenfranchised silence -- Joining the dots