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The past, present and future of Virginia Political Economy

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Abstract

We present a short history of the Virginia School of Political Economy in its institutional settings of University of Virginia (UVA), Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, or Virginia Tech (VPI), and George Mason University (GMU). We discuss the original research and educational project as envisioned by Buchanan at UVA, its maturity into a normal science at VPI, and its continuation at GMU. We argue that the future of Virginia Political Economy will depend critically on the various alternative interpretations of the Buchanan project in positive economics, welfare economics, and political economy.

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Notes

  1. Also published in 1962 was Buchanan’s “Politics, Policy, and Pigovian Margins” and Buchanan and Stubblebine’s “Externality,” both of which appeared in Economica, as well as Davis and Whinston’s “Externalities, Welfare and the Theory of Games” in the Journal of Political Economy. Davis was a former Ph.D. student of Buchanan’s. All were significant papers in the emerging literature on comparative institutional analysis of government and the market.

  2. Letter to Charles J. Hitch, 20 January 1969, Buchanan papers, Buchanan House, George Mason University.

  3. We are using those terms in the standard philosophy of science meaning where “revolutionary science” refers to work calling for a paradigm shift, whereas “normal science” refers to work within an accepted paradigm. In other words, the work in the 1960s initiating the public choice paradigm was so successful that by the 1970s folks working within the economic analysis of politics were more or less engaged in normal science. The constitutional political economy branch of public choice (which is most identified with James Buchanan) was still a revolutionary vision even to those working within traditional public choice.

  4. See Kirzner (2014) for an appreciation of Buchanan and his support of the modern Austrian school of economics. Also see Boettke’s Living Economics (2012), which devotes two chapters to Buchanan’s contributions to “mainline” economics.

  5. See this link for a video recording of his talk at GMU in 1983 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pYCD7_OG2fU#t=12

  6. See Aligica and Boettke (2009) for a discussion of the Bloomington School and its importance for political economy. Also see the papers in this issue discussing the contribution of the Bloomington School to the public choice tradition.

  7. See Boettke et al. (2013) for a discussion of the contra-Whig theory of intellectual history applied to economics.

  8. See Buchanan’s (1997) collection of essays Post Socialist Political Economy and, in particular, his essays on the “tacit presuppositions of political economy”.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. George Mason University, Fairfax, VA, 22030, USA

    Peter J. Boettke

  2. LAMETA (UMR 5474), University of Montpellier I, 4000, Montpellier, France

    Alain Marciano

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  1. Peter J. Boettke
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  2. Alain Marciano
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Correspondence to Peter J. Boettke.

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Boettke, P.J., Marciano, A. The past, present and future of Virginia Political Economy. Public Choice 163, 53–65 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11127-014-0162-6

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