James M. Buchanan and Liberal Political Economy: A Rational Reconstruction

42 Pages Posted: 20 Feb 2017

See all articles by Richard E. Wagner

Richard E. Wagner

George Mason University - Department of Economics; George Mason University - Mercatus Center

Date Written: February 18, 2017

Abstract

This paper presents the preface and first chapter of my book on James M. Buchanan, which should be out in late 2017, published by Lexington. This chapter introduces Buchanan to those who don’t know him, or who know him only in terms of individual pieces of work they have encountered. I portray Buchanan as a hedgehog of a thinker, to recur to Isiah Berlin’s well-known essay on Tolstoy. Looking backward from the end of his life, Buchanan appears as a massive oak tree casting shade over numerous areas of inquiry, and with all that shade flowing from a single sapling planted 64 years before his death when he published his first paper. Chapters 2-7 unfold as a book within the book, where I pursue the logic of my rational reconstruction. References to citations do not appear because all references for the book are collected as a single file and placed at the end of the book.

Keywords: public choice; constitutional political economy; Virginia political economy; Frank Knight; Knut Wicksell; Antonio de Viti de Marco; Gordon Tullock

JEL Classification: D62, D70, H41, P16

Suggested Citation

Wagner, Richard E., James M. Buchanan and Liberal Political Economy: A Rational Reconstruction (February 18, 2017). GMU Working Paper in Economics No. 17-04, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=2920016 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2920016

Richard E. Wagner (Contact Author)

George Mason University - Department of Economics ( email )

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HOME PAGE: http://mason.gmu.edu/~rwagner/

George Mason University - Mercatus Center ( email )

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Arlington, VA 22201
United States

HOME PAGE: http://ppe.mercatus.org/scholars/richard-wagner

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