The Contractarian Constitutional Political Economy of James Buchanan

Abstract

This paper provides an overview of Buchanan's constitutional political economy, as it emerged over the course of fifty years. This was the field in which James Buchanan devoted the most effort and to which he made the largest contributions. Although the finely grained arguments that he developed cannot easily summarized, the main developments and central line of reasoning can be covered in a single paper, because just a handful of themes reappear and are further developed as his thinking about what would eventually come to be called constitutional political economy matured.

Keywords: Buchanan, Contractarian, Constitutionalism, Rational Choice, Constitutional Political Economy, History of Thought

JEL Classification: B10, B40, D6, H10, H20