The Limits of Liberty: Between Anarchy and Leviathan [Paperback]

James M. Buchanan (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0226078205 | ISBN-13: 978-0226078205 | Publication Date: February 15, 1977

"The Limits of Liberty is concerned mainly with two topics. One is an attempt to construct a new contractarian theory of the state, and the other deals with its legitimate limits. The latter is a matter of great practical importance and is of no small significance from the standpoint of political philosophy."—Scott Gordon, Journal of Political Economy

James Buchanan offers a strikingly innovative approach to a pervasive problem of social philosophy. The problem is one of the classic paradoxes concerning man's freedom in society: in order to protect individual freedom, the state must restrict each person's right to act. Employing the techniques of modern economic analysis, Professor Buchanan reveals the conceptual basis of an individual's social rights by examining the evolution and development of these rights out of presocial conditions.

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About the Author

James M. Buchanan is an eminent economist who won the Alfred Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences in 1986 and one of the greatest scholars of liberty in the twentieth century. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Product Details

• Paperback: 217 pages
• Publisher: University Of Chicago Press (February 15, 1977)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0226078205
• ISBN-13: 978-0226078205
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,387,507 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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23 of 23 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Contractarian theory of the state, October 14, 2004

By 

Jerry H. Tempelman "[e-mail]" (New York, NY) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Limits of Liberty: Between Anarchy and Leviathan (Paperback)

The book's thesis is two-fold
* Anarchy is undesirable if for no other reason than that adopting some public works will increase Pareto-efficiency (e.g. David Hume's famous illustration of the drainage of the village meadow: p. 49).
* Leviathan-like government is also undesirable. The reason is Buchanan's usual theme that if left unchecked (e.g. constitutionally), government will grow larger than is Pareto-efficient (ch. 6) due to dynamics of public choice (which are briefly touched upon on pp. 129-131 but worked out in far greater detail in The Calculus of Consent).

The topic of the appropriate role and size of government is approached from an economist's rather than a philosopher's perspective (e.g., pp. 11, 98 make this explicit). Considerations are therefore of efficiency rather than justice or philosophy. E.g., property rights are based on contract-type reasons rather than natural-law type reasons such as those argued by John Locke and Robert Nozick (pp. 76-77).

The book is persuasive in demonstrating that "even under the most favorable conditions the operation of democratic process may generate budgetary excess" and that "[d]emocracy may become its own Leviathan unless constitutional limits are imposed and enforced" (pp. 204-205). However, it does not explore where in between anarchy and Leviathan the optimal size of government lies, or even how to determine this point (he says so explicitly on p. 222). This is deliberate, in that Buchanan does not want to impose his views of his own preferred society on the rest of us (pp. 3, 210). But while this is understandable, it also leaves the book hopelessly wanting or uninteresting. The thesis that neither anarchy nor Leviathan is ideal is neither new nor controversial, and it is the where-in-between part that is interesting (on p. 227 Buchanan acknowledges that the alternative that falls in between anarchy and Leviathan must indeed be articulated). If we are expected to buy in to "ordered anarchy" (pp. 149, 169, 215, 228), it would be helpful to know what Buchanan means by "ordered".

Note: All page references are to the Collected Works edition (vol. 7).