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Economics and Beyond

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The Political Economy of James Buchanan

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Abstract

James Buchanan, reflecting on the substance of his own self-image as it was when in 1986 he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Economics, was capable of making a declaration which in other circumstances could all too easily have caused him to be ostracised as an eccentric and ridiculed as a crank:

I am not, and have never been, an ‘economist’ in any narrowly-defined meaning. My interest in understanding how the economic interaction process works has always been instrumental to the more inclusive purpose of understanding how we can learn to live one with another without engaging in Hobbesian war and without subjecting ourselves to the dictates of the state. The ‘wealth of nations’, as such, has never commanded my attention save as a valued by-product of an effectively free society.1

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Notes and References

  1. ‘Better than Plowing’, p. 373.

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  2. FCC,p. 241.

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  3. J.M. Buchanan, Cost and Choice (CAC) (Chicago: Markham Publishing, 1969), p. 9.

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  4. J.M. Buchanan, ‘Our Times: Past, Present and Future’, in M.J. Anderson (ed.) The Unfinished Agenda (London: Institute of Economic Affairs, 1986), p. 34.

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  5. WSED,p. 158.

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  6. DD,p. ix.

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8.1 Subjectivism

  1. FTPE,p. 96.

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  2. J.M. Buchanan, ‘Introduction: L.S.E. cost theory in retrospect’, in J.M. Buchanan and G.F. Thirlby (eds) L.S.E. Essays on Cost (New York and London: New York University Press, 1981), p. 14.

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  3. CAC,p. 43.

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  4. PFDP,p. 60.

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  5. PFDP,p. 60.

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  6. CAC,p.vii.

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  7. CAC,p. 43.

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  8. CAC,p. 43.

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  9. ‘L.S.E. cost theory in retrospect’, p. 14.

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  10. G. Harcourt, ‘Notes on an economic querist: G.L.S. Shackle’, Journal of Post Keynesian Economics,vol. 4, 1981, p. 140.

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  11. CAC,p. 36.

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  12. ‘L.S.E. cost theory in retrospect’, p. 12n.

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  13. J.M. Buchanan, ‘Knight, Frank H.’ in D.L. Sills (ed.) International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences (Glencoe, Ill.: The Macmillan Company & The Free Press, 1968), p. 425.

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  14. ‘Knight, Frank H.’, p. 425.

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  16. ‘L.S.E. cost theory in retrospect’, p. 3.

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  17. WSED,p. 282.

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  18. WSED,p. 282.

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  19. WSED,p.281.

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  20. WSED,p.280.

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  22. FCC, p. ix.

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  27. Smith, Wealth of Nations,vol.I, pp. 17, 18.

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  28. WSED,p. 27.

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8.2 The Mixed Economy

  1. LL, p. 167.

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  2. ‘Better than Plowing’, p. 362.

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  3. LMS,p. 3.

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  4. LMS,p. 10.

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  5. LL,p. 170.

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  6. WSED,p. 112. Emphasis deleted.

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  7. LMS,p. 90.

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  8. FCC,p. 116. In a letter to the author dated 13 June 1988, Buchanan has re-stated this point as follows: ‘For me, government has always been something to be protected from rather than to be the provider of assistance to. Perhaps this attribute is located in my southernness.’

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  9. RR,p. 150.

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  10. Nozick, Anarchy, State, and Utopia,p. 329.

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  17. PFDP, p. 11.

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  18. PF,p. 355.

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  19. PF,p. 364.

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  20. PF,p. 84.

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  21. PF,p. 434.

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  23. J.M. Buchanan, ‘The Constitution of Economic Policy’, American Economic Renew,vol. 77, 1987, p. 247.

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  26. PT, p. 152.

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  27. Inconsistencies,p. 12

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  28. Inconsistencies,p. 4.

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  30. FCC,p. 17.

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  31. LL,p. 34.

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  32. LL,p. 21.

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  33. PF, p. 176.

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  34. ‘Our Times: Past, Present, and Future’, p. 31.

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  35. WSED, p. 176.

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  36. ‘Our Times: Past, Present, and Future’, pp. 34, 36.

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8.3 Politics, Economics and Political Economy

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  2. WSED,p. 138.

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  3. WSED,p. 139.

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  4. See J.K. Galbraith, ‘Power and the Useful Economist’, American Economic Review,vol. 63, 1973.

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  13. ‘The Constitution of Economic Policy’, p. 243.

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  14. PPPD,p.v.

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  15. ‘The Constitution of Economic Policy’, p. 247.

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  18. WSED,p.208.

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  19. WSED,p.208.

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  20. WSED,pp. 208–9.

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Authors
  1. David Reisman
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© 1990 David Reisman

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Reisman, D. (1990). Economics and Beyond. In: The Political Economy of James Buchanan. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-10519-9_8

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