Abstract
James M. Buchanan’s and Vincent Ostrom’s contributions to the field of Constitutional Political Economy spanned 60+ years as they explored how individuals come together in democratic societies to design social decision processes capable of protecting individual liberty. This chapter examines a set of rules frequently associated with such protective processes—votes, vetoes, voice, and exit—in order to compare how these scholars’ approaches to constitutional choice overlapped and where their perspectives differed slightly. It concludes with an examination of their treatments of US federalism and their concerns for the future viability of this institutional form.
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Notes
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For an excellent survey of James Buchanan ’s political economy, see Richard Wagner (2017), James M. Buchanan and Liberal Political Economy: A Rational Reconstruction. Likewise, Aligica and Boettke (2009), Challenging Institutional Analysis and Development: The Bloomington School and Aligica (2013), Institutional Diversity and Political Economy: The Ostroms and Beyond for important reviews of Vincent Ostrom’s scholarship.
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For example, segregation in housing and other decisions regarding property rights limited options to minorities during large periods in U.S. history. Such rules can limit the ability of this model to reflect societal preferences based on locational decisions alone.
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Herzberg, R.Q. (2018). Votes, Vetoes, Voice, and Exit: Constitutional Protections in the Work of James M. Buchanan and Vincent Ostrom. In: Wagner, R. (eds) James M. Buchanan. Remaking Economics: Eminent Post-War Economists. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-03080-3_22
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