Abstract
My concerns center on political processes and, more particularly, American governmental decisions pertaining to the raising and spending of public monies. Fiscal choices are at the heart of politics. As Aaron Wildavsky has often noted, budgets are key political documents for they register the allocative and distributive choices that have been made or are being proposed. In this chapter I attempt to describe, integrate, and assess certain contributions of modern pubic choice to these questions of fiscal policy. The work of Bartlett, Borcherding, Breton, Browning, Buchanan and Tullock, Niskanen, and Tollison, to mention some of the more prominent, loom large. My survey is highly selective, but it is hoped not unreasonable or unfair. nontechnical contributions as well as work with a certain thrust are emphasized. highly specialzed empirical investigations are occasionally cited but not extensively discussed. Although important in a science of public choice, they are here deemed of lesser import to general students of public choice and finince. While cognizant of the value of surveys of the literature, I seek here a synthesis or a consistent point of view. The synthesis draws unequally upon two divergent perspectives: demand and supply models. In the former, citizen-condumers reign supreme; in the latter, politicians, bureaucrats, and goverments play roles not unlike those ascribed to monopolistic businesses by, say, J.K. galbraith.
The fundamental business of our representatives is taxing and spending
— E. S. Phelps “Rational Taxation” Social Research 44 (Winter, 1977): 657
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Notes
Duncan Black,The Theory of Committees and Elections ( Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1958
Anthony Downs,An Economic Theory of Democracy ( New York: Harper, 1957 )
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Selected Bibliography
Dennis Mueller,Public Choice ( New York: Cambridge University Press, 1979 )
Anthony Downs, AnEconomic Theory of Democracy ( New York: Harper and Row, 1957 )
This is an important element in the famous statement on the components of democracy as provided by Robert Dahl,Who Governs? ( New Haven: Yale University Press, 1961 )
The person who makes this important addition quite clearly is Timothy Bates,Economic Man as Politician ( Morristown, N.J.: General Learning Press, 1976 )
Mitchell points out that the important work in this area is from Gordon Tullock, “The Charity of the Uncharitable,”Western Economic Journal 9 (December 1971): 379–92;
George Stigler, “Director’s Law of Public Income Redistribution,” Journal of Law and Economics 13 (April 1970): 1–10
Mancur Olson,The Logic of Collective Action ( Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1965 )
Oliver Williamson’sMarkets and Hierarchies (New York: Free Press, 1975)
Steven Cheung,The Myth of Social Costs ( London: The Institute of Economic Affairs, 1978 ), p. 53
Margaret Levi and Douglass C. North, “Towards a Property-Rights Theory of Exploitation,”Politics and Society 11, no. 3 (1982): 315–20
Douglass C. North and Robert Thomas,The Rise of the Western World ( New York: Cambridge University Press, 1973 )
“The Predatory Theory of Rule,”Politics and Society 10, no. 4 (1981): 431–65
William Brustein, “A Regional Mode of Production Analysis of Political Behavior,” Politics and Society 10, no. 4 (1981): 355–98
Max Weber,Economy and Society, ed. Guenther Roth and Carl Wittich ( New York: Bedminster Press, 1968 )
Gabriel Ardant,Histoire de L’impot, 2 vols. ( Paris: Fayard, 1971 )
See Levi, “The Predatory Theory of Rule,” pp. 431–35
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Mitchell, W.C. (1983). Fiscal Behavior of the Modern Democratic State: Public Choice Perspectives and Contributions. In: Wade, L.L. (eds) Political Economy. Recent Economic Thought Series, vol 2. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-6658-1_3
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