Abstract
One of the key tenets of James Buchanan’s political thought was the centrality of the status quo, embodied in Buchanan’s frequently heard axiom that “we start from where we are.” There is practical political value in “starting from where we are,” because we are in fact there, and not someplace else. Buchanan’s normative concern is that starting from where “we are” means that changes are more likely to be voluntary, and therefore Pareto-improving. The history of this notion of the status quo in contractarian thought is developed briefly, and then a particular example, the Chilean Constitution and its problematic implementation, is discussed.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
Some thinkers have been quite scornful of the idea of hypothetical consent. See, for example, Hume (1978), who says of tacit or implicit consent implied by residency:
Can we seriously say, that a poor peasant or artisan has a free choice to leave his country, when he knows no foreign language or manners, and lives, from day to day, by the small wages which he acquires? We may as well assert that a man, by remaining in a vessel, freely consents to the dominion of the master; though he was carried on board while asleep, and must leap into the ocean and perish, the moment he leaves her. For some thinkers, the (hypothetical) agreement to a set of rules is actually the beginning of society itself, as in the case of Montesquieu, who conceived of humans as living timidly in the wild, fearful of having contact with other humans. For such theorists, the origins of society both causes, and is caused by, the agreement on how individuals will be governed.
- 2.
- 3.
Because ($1 billion * (1.0055)) = $25 million. That’s the difference between 2% growth rate and a 2.5% growth rate compounded over five years.
- 4.
Voting members were (1) the president of the republic, (2) the president of the Senate, (3) the president of the Supreme Court, (4) the 3 commanders of the Army, Navy, and Air Force, and (5) the director general of the national police force (Carabineros de Chile). Consequently, the military had a large majority on any COSENA vote. Nonvoting members included the ministers of defense; economy, development and reconstruction; finance; foreign relations; and interior. For details, see Hudson (1994): http://countrystudies.us/chile/87.htm.
Bibliography
Brennan, G. (1999). Notes on Buchanan and Methodological Individualism. Research School in Social Sciences, Australian National University, Canberra. http://publicchoice.info/Buchanan/files/brennan.htm.
Brennan, G. (2015). Buchanan’s Anti-Conservatism. Public Choice, 163, 7–13.
Brennan, G., & Buchanan, J. (1985). Reason of Rules: Constitutional Political Economy. New York: Cambridge University Press. Vol. 10 of The Collected Works of James Buchanan. Indianapolis, IN: Liberty Fund.
Buchanan, J. (1990). The Domain of Constitutional Economics. Constitutional Political Economy, I(1), 13–14. Reprinted in The Logical Foundations of Constitutional Liberty, 1999. Vol. 1 of The Collected Works of James Buchanan (pp. 377–395). Indianapolis, IN: Liberty Fund.
Buchanan, J. (1991). The Foundations of Normative Individualism. In The Economics and the Ethics of Constitutional Order. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. Reprinted in The Logical Foundations of Constitutional Liberty, 1999. Vol. 1 of The Collected Works of James Buchanan, 281–292. Indianapolis, IN: Liberty Fund.
Buchanan, J. (1999a). The Limits of Liberty: Between Anarchy and Leviathan. In G. Brennan, H. Kliemt, & R. Tollison (Ed.), Collected Works of James Buchanan (Vol. 7). Indianapolis, IN: Liberty Fund.
Buchanan, J. (1999b). The Relatively Absolute Absolutes. In G. Brennan, H. Kliemt, & R. Tollison (Ed.), Collected Works of James Buchanan, The Logical Foundation of Constitutional Liberty (Vol. 1, pp. 442–454). Indianapolis, IN: Liberty Fund.
Buchanan, J., & Brennan, G. (2001). The Intellectual Portrait Series: A Conversation with James M. Buchanan. Indianapolis, IN: Liberty Fund. http://oll.libertyfund.org/titles/buchanan-the-intellectual-portrait-series-a-conversation-with-james-m-buchanan-part-1 and http://oll.libertyfund.org/titles/buchanan-the-intellectual-portrait-series-a-conversation-with-james-m-buchanan-part-2.
Buchanan, J., & Tullock, G. (1962). The Calculus of Consent. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.
Campbell, B. (2005). Economic Causes of Progressivism. Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era, 4(1), 7–22.
Cooter, R. D., & Siegel, N. (2010). Collective Action Federalism: A General Theory of Article I, Section 8. Stanford Law Review, 63, 115–143.
Cox, G. W., North, D., & Weingast, B. (2016, December). The Violence Trap: A Political-Economic Approach to the Problems of Development (Working Paper). Hoover Institution, Stanford University.
Fraser, C. (2015). Mohism. In Edward N. Zalta (Ed.), The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2015 Edition). https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2015/entries/mohism/.
Hardin, R. (1989). Rationally Justifying Political Coercion. Journal of Philosophical Research., 15, 79–91.
Hayek, F. A. (1979). Law, Legislation and Liberty (3 Vols.). Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Home, H. (Lord Kames). (1779). Essays on the Principles of Morality and Natural Religion, Corrected and Improved, in a Third Edition. Several Essays Added Concerning the Proof of a Deity, Edited and with an Introduction by Mary Catherine Moran (Indianapolis, IN: Liberty Fund, 2005). June 19, 2018. http://oll.libertyfund.org/titles/1352.
Hudson, R. A. (Ed.). (1994). Chile: A Country Study. Washington, DC: GPO for the Library of Congress. http://countrystudies.us/chile/.
Hume, D. [1739–1740] (1978). In L. A. Selby-Bigge & P. H. Nidditch (Eds.), A Treatise of Human Nature (2nd ed.). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Kliemt, H. (2004). Contractarianism as Liberal Conservatism: Buchanan’s Unfinished Philosophical Agenda. Constitutional Political Economy, 5(2), 171–185.
Kliemt, H. (2011). Bukantianism: Buchanan’s Philosophical Economics. Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, 80(2), 275–279.
Mo, T. (n.d.). Mozi Writings, Spring and Autumn—Warring States: 490 BC–221 BC (English translation: W. P. Mei). https://ctext.org/mozi.
Montesquieu, C. S. B. (1989). The Spirit of the Laws (A. M. Cohler, B. C. Miller, & H. S. Stone, Trans.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Ostrom, E. (1990). Governing the Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Rawls, J. (1971). A Theory of Justice. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Smith, A. (1976 [1776]). An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Tomasi, J. (2011). Free Market Fairness. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Wicksell, K. (1958 [1896]). Finanztheoretische Untersuchungen. Jena: Gustav Fischer Verlag. Partially Reprinted as Wicksell, K. (1958). A New Principle of Just Taxation. In R. A. Musgrave & A. T. Peacock (Ed.), Classics in the Theory of Public Finance Peacock (pp. 72–118) London: Macmillan.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2018 The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Munger, M.C. (2018). Starting from Where We Are: The Importance of the Status Quo in James Buchanan. 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_3
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-03080-3_3
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-03079-7
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-03080-3
eBook Packages: Economics and FinanceEconomics and Finance (R0)