CALCULUS OF CONSENT, THE (Tullock, Gordon. Selections. V. 2.) (Paperback)

by GORDON TULLOCK (Author), JAMES BUCHANAN (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Review
"A brilliant and significant contribution to the literature concerning the analysis of political processes with the methods of economics...." --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

Product Description
This is the second volume of Liberty Fund's "The Selected Works of Gordon Tullock", it is a reprint edition of the ground-breaking economic classic written by two of the world's preeminent economists - Gordon Tullock and Nobel Laureate James M. Buchanan. This book is a unique blend of economics and political science that helped create significant new subfields in each discipline respectively, namely, the public choice school and constitutional political economy. Charles K. Rowley, Duncan Black Professor of Economics at George Mason University, points out in his introduction, "The Calculus of Consent" is, by a wide margin, the most widely cited publication of each coauthor and, by general agreement, their most important scientific contribution." The book is divided into four parts, each consisting of several chapters. The introduction by Professor Rowley provides a short overview of the book and identifies key insights that permeated the bounds of economics and political science and created an enduring nexus between the two sciences. Part I establishes the conceptual framework of the book's subject; part II defines the realm of social choice; part III applies the logic developed in part II to describe a range of decision-making rules, most notably, the rule of simple majority; while part IV explores the economics and ethics of democracy.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 364 pages
• Publisher: Liberty Fund Inc. (November 1, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0865975329
• ISBN-13: 978-0865975323
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 5.9 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #375,576 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

57 of 64 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A genuine, celebrated classic, February 12, 1999

By	Donald J. Boudreaux (Burke, VA United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Calculus of Consent: Logical Foundations of Constitutional Democracy (Ann Arbor Paperbacks) (Paperback)

Some reviewers comment that this book has "a conservative bias." Nothing could be further from the truth. This book is written in the great classical-liberal tradition that motivated the American revolution and the drafting of America's 1787 Constitution. Buchanan and Tullock saw themselves as putting into modern economic language the insights and wisdom of James Madison and Co. The book does indeed counsel skepticism of big government, and it is no great fan of unlimited democracy. But the authors come to this position because they understand that even democratic governments can be tyrannical and that a depoliticized society -- governed largely by private property rights -- promises peace, prosperity, and cultural flourishing. Few books on economics are as original and insightful as is The Calculus of Consent -- and it remains as fresh in 1999 as it was when first published in 1962.

26 of 28 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A landmark in analysis of government and its problems, November 27, 1998

By	Robert E. Lloyd (Deerfield Beach, FL) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: The Calculus of Consent: Logical Foundations of Constitutional Democracy (Ann Arbor Paperbacks) (Paperback)

This is probably one of the most rewarding books anyone can read. If you care about government and what it does (or doesn't) do to (or for) you, read this book. It requires patience and concentration, but it's well worth the effort. The authors succeed in showing how it is wrong to assume that government has always the best of intentions. They put a human face on politics and explain with impressive reasoning why government and politics produce unreasonable outcomes. The explanatory power of this book is unmatched. Anyone who cares about what this country is and what it could be should read it. Despite what you may have heard, their agenda is not conservative, it is individualistic, treating each person with dignity. The outcomes may surprise you, but you can't help but be moved by the force of their logic.

19 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Politics through an economist's lens, January 5, 2004

By	E. Husman "ehusman" (Las Cruces, NM USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: The Calculus of Consent: Logical Foundations of Constitutional Democracy (Ann Arbor Paperbacks) (Paperback)

In this landmark work, Buchanan and Tullock work through the basic principles of public choice theory. They reject the political scientists' conception of the political process in which policy decisions are viewed as a private interest vs. public interest struggle. They replace that with a theory that the public interest is simply the aggregation of private decision makers. They further point out that in the political science view, the "public interest" is always the correct choice with the same appeal to all voters, which may or may not be thwarted by "special interests", when in fact most choices appeal to many different "law consumers" with different strengths.
That is to say, given a choice to fund road improvements or not, some voters will have very strong feelings for, some strong feelings against, but many voters may not have strong feelings either way. In a market transaction, the voters strongly desiring the road could purchase the acceptance of the opposition and uninterested voters with concessions, resulting in an efficient allocation of resources (everyone is happy). The analog to this in the political realm is that politicians buy the votes of other politicians by promising to vote for their issues. Thus, in the Buchanan/Tullock view, such log-rolling is to be expected, while in the traditional political science view, it is anomalous. Their model explains things that the standard view of politics previously could not.

They also make distinctions between constitutional rules and voting made in the context of existing constitutional rules. As part of the constitution making process, they point out that the traditional political science approach views simple majority voting as the standard, and question why unanimity is not. There is a tradeoff to be considered: a unanimity-based system results in no external costs, but considerable decision-making costs, whereas a simple majority-based system imposes some of both. They conclude that many more decisions should be made on at least a super-majority system, especially those decisions that potentially impose significant external costs.

The biggest problem I had with this book is that the prose is somewhat dense, though not as bad as Ricardo. They tend to write almost exclusively in the passive tense. One description I have seen of this work is that it essentially applies the science of economics to the ideas described in Federalist X. It would be nice to see an update of the contents in a more user-friendly style; their ideas would find a much broader audience and a better understanding of Madison's thesis on majority rule and the "violence of faction".