|
"Understanding
Democracy: An Introduction to Public Choice" is a comprehensive
introduction to Public Choice. It covers the history of public choice, the
history of democracy, the fundamental question of market vs. government,
the significance of the market economy and the sources of market failure,
the reasons for a constitution, the essential and optional provisions of a
constitution, election rules, the types of representation, voting,
campaign spending, the efficiency of voting rules, vote-trading, lawmaking
and special interests, political parties, pressure groups, the history of
bureaucracy, models of bureaucracy, rent seeking, and various forms of
privatization.
The book takes the well-established Public
Choice viewpoint that the major classes of actors in a democracy are
neither superior nor inferior beings. It assumes that they are ordinary
people with ordinary goals and ordinary abilities to achieve their goals.
They are not especially "public interested" and not especially
selfish.
The basic question that the book tries to
answer is this. Suppose that members of a collective want to transfer
their control over force to agents in order to cause "public
goods" to be supplied or to correct for other so-called "market
failures." What kind of government are they likely to want? This
implies two sub-questions. First how would they assure that agents are
hired to provide the services they want? Second, how would they control
the agents?
The book answers these questions by using the method
of understanding. In other words, we "put ourselves in the
shoes" of the actors who have the task of building a constitution
that will enable
1. politicians to be elected,
2. laws to be made,
3. law enforcement to occur, and
4. protection for the members of the collective who build the
constitution.
To judge whether members of a collective can achieve such goals, one must
build an image of how real people will act in the various roles that are
dictated by a constitution. We ask: How will voters act? What
characteristics are the politicians likely to have and how are they likely
to act? What characteristics are the bureaucrats who are hired to
administer the law likely to have?
In the process of answering these questions,
this book takes several intellectual journeys. The first is back in
history to the times and places where the basic principles of modern
democracy were slowly set in place and clarified. The second is a brief
trip to economics in order to understand the strengths of a capitalist
market economy and its limitations. The third is a journey through the
process of making a constitution. We imagine a general assembly of people
who expect to be subject (a) to the laws passed by the agents and (b) to
the enforcement procedures adopted by the bureaucrats who administer the
laws. Next, we travel with voters as they make their voting decision and
choose among candidates for political office. Fifth, we join hands with
legislative candidates first as they try to get elected; and second as
they exercise their rights to make laws. Sixth, we take a brief detour to
visit political parties and pressure groups in order to better understand
how they help and how they influence the lawmakers. Seventh, we tour with
bureaucrats who are hired to execute laws and to enforce the terms of a
constitution.
Following
these journeys, we investigate two topics that have aroused the interest
of Public Choice scholars in recent decades. The first is rent-seeking --
efforts by citizens to gain at the expense of others by influencing the
making and administration of laws. The second is privatization, which is
especially important in new democracies.
Feedback
| |