Suchergebnisse

ABSTRACT. Viewed retrospectively, the early research program in public choice was intellectually exciting, and especially as that program found its institutional home in Blacksburg, Virginia, in the 1970s and 1980s. The time was ripe for such a scientific development, and the events of the 1960s gave impetus to particular thrusts of the still‐emerging research agenda.

James Madison noted that government would be unnecessary if men were angels. The shortfall of value between the idealized anarchy of a society of angels and the society of men as they are measures the tragedy of politics, which emerges at several levels. Resources are required for the maintenance of order, and those agents who are guardians of order will not, themselves, be angels. Further, rents promised to such agents will attract efforts at capture. Reductions in the measure of the tragedy remain possible through both shifts in ethical standards, at all levels, and shifts in institutional‐constitutional structures.

Assesses the foundational premise of Rawls's political philosophy, as a memoriam to the late scholar.

The book How Democratic is the American Constitution? by Robert A. Dahl, is reviewed.