Political economics and normative analysis

New Political Economy

Volumn 13, Issue 1, 2008, Pages 61-76

  Jennings, Colin ^a   Mclean, Iain ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF STRATHCLYDE   (United Kingdom)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

GOVERNANCE APPROACH; INSTITUTIONAL REFORM; POLITICAL ECONOMY; TRADE-OFF;

EID: 40449101944     PISSN: 13563467     EISSN: 14699923     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/13563460701859702     Document Type: Article

References (47)

1. See Iain McLean & Colin Jennings (eds), Applying the Dismal Science: When Economists Give Advice to Government (Palgrave MacMillan, 2006).
2. Joseph Stiglitz, Economics of the Public Sector (Norton, 2000), p. 60.
3. One famous implication regarding commodity taxation is the Ramsey Rule that goods most inelastic in demand should be taxed most heavily as this creates the least distortion. See Christopher Heady, 'Optimal Taxation as a Guide to Tax Policy: A Survey', Fiscal Studies, Vol. 14, No. 1 (1993), pp. 15-41 for a review of the literature on optimal taxation. We will refer to this rule in the next section.
4. Arthur Pigou, The Economics of Welfare (Macmillan, 1932)
5. Ronald Coase, 'The Problem of Social Cost', Journal of Law and Economics, Vol. 3, No. 1 (1960), pp. 1-44
6. Wallace E. Oates, Fiscal Federalism (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1972).
7. Richard Musgrave, The Theory of Public Finance (McGraw-Hill, 1959).
8. See Yew-Kwang Ng, Welfare Economics: Towards a More Complete Analysis (Palgrave MacMillan, 2004), chs 8 and 9, for a discussion of both issues.
9. James Buchanan, 'Individual Choice in Voting and the Market', Journal of Political Economy, Vol. 62, No. 4 (1954), pp. 334-43
10. Kenneth Arrow, Social Choice and Individual Values (John Wiley, 1951).
11. James Buchanan, 'The Pure Theory of Public Finance: A Suggested Approach', Journal of Political Economy, Vol. 57, No. 6 (1949), pp. 496-505.
12. Geoffrey Brennan & James Buchanan, The Power to Tax (Cambridge University Press, 1980).
13. James Buchanan & Gordon Tullock, The Calculus of Consent (University of Michigan Press, 1962).
14. David Hume, 'Of the Independency of Parliament', in Knud Haakonssen (ed.), Political Essays (Cambridge University Press 1994), p. 24: 'It is, therefore, a just political maxim, that every man must be supposed a knave: Though at the same time, it appears somewhat strange, that a maxim should be true in politics, which is false in fact.' Originally published in 1741.
15. Dennis Mueller, Constitutional Democracy (Oxford University Press, 1996).
16. Torsten Persson & Guido Tabellini, Political Economics: Explaining Economic Policy (The MIT Press, 2000).
17. Ibid., p. 3.
18. Charles Blankart & Gerrit Koester, 'Political Economics versus Public Choice', Kyklos, Vol. 59, No. 2 (2006), pp. 171-200
19. Alberto Alesina, Torsten Persson & Guido Tabellini, 'Reply to Blankart and Koester's Political Economics versus Public Choice', Kyklos, Vol. 59, No. 2 (2006), pp. 201-8.
20. See Mancur Olson, Power and Prosperity: Outgrowing Communist and Capitalist Dictatorships (Basic Books, 2000).
21. See Daron Acemoglu, 'Why Not a Political Coase Theorem? Social Conflict Commitment and Politics', Journal of Comparative Economics, Vol. 31, No. 4 (2003), pp. 620-52.
22. Daron Acemoglu & James Robinson, 'Inefficient Redistribution', American Political Science Review, Vol. 95, No. 3 (2001), pp. 649-61.
23. The cost of inefficient redistribution is amplified by the inclusion of any rent-seeking costs and a moral judgement that transfers to some of these groups are not deserved. An alternative explanation of inefficient policies is that voters systematically misunderstand economics in various ways, such as by wrongly believing that protection is better for the economy than free trade. Bryan Caplan, The Myth of the Rational Voter: Why Democracies Choose Bad Policies (Princeton University Press, 2007).
24. Finn Kydland & Edward Prescott, 'Rules Rather than Discretion: The Inconsistency of Optimal Plans', Journal of Political Economy, Vol. 85, No. 3 (1977), pp. 473-90.
25. Timothy Besley & Stephen Coate, 'On the Public Choice Critique of Welfare Economics', Public Choice, Vol. 114, No. 3 (2003), pp. 253-73.
26. James Buchanan, 'Politics, Policy and the Pigouvian Margins', Economica, Vol. 29, No. 113 (1962), pp. 17-28.
27. Besley & Coate, 'On the Public Choice Critique', p. 255.
28. Torsten Persson & Guido Tabellini, The Economic Effects of Constitutions (The MIT Press, 2003).
29. See Joseph Henrich, Robert Boyd, Samuel Bowles, Colin Camerer, Ernst Fehr & Herbert Gintis (eds), Foundations of Human Sociality (Oxford University Press, 2004) for a comprehensive survey.
30. See Stephen Coate & Stephen Morris, 'On the Form of Transfers to Special Interests', Journal of Political Economy, Vol. 103, No. 6 (1995), pp. 1210-35
31. Timothy Besley & Robin Burgess, 'The Political Economy of Government Responsiveness: Theory and Evidence from India', Quarterly Journal of Economics, Vol. 117, No. 4 (2002), pp. 1415-52
32. Timothy Besley, Principled Agents: The Political Economy of Good Government (Oxford University Press, 2006).
33. Timothy Besley & Michael Smart, 'Fiscal Restraints and Voter Welfare', Journal of Public Economics, Vol. 91, No. 3-4 (2007), pp. 775-83.
34. See Robert Goodin & Kevin Roberts, 'The Ethical Voter', American Political Science Review, Vol. 69, No. 3 (1975), pp. 926-8.
35. Geoffrey Brennan & Alan Hamlin, 'On Political Representation', British Journal of Political Science, Vol. 29, No. 1 (1999), pp. 109-27
36. Geoffrey Brennan & Alan Hamlin, Democratic Devices and Desires (Cambridge University Press, 2000).
37. Julian Le Grand, Motivation, Agency, and Public Policy (Oxford University Press, 2003).
38. Anthony Downs, An Economic Theory of Democracy (Harper Row, 1957).
39. See Donald Wittman, The Myth of Democratic Failure: Why Political Institutions are Efficient (University of Chicago Press, 1995).
40. See http://www.ipsos-mori.com/mrr/2000/c001110.shtml (last accessed 29 January 2008).
41. See http://www.ipsos-mori.com/polls/2006/pdf/aet-report.pdf (last accessed 29 January 2008).
42. A series of papers have analysed the problem of pandering/populism in the context of political agency models. See Bandice Canes-Wrone, Michael Herron & Kenneth Shotts, 'Leadership and pandering: A theory of executive policymaking', American Journal of Political Science, Vol. 45, No. 3 (2001), pp. 532-50
43. Stephen Morris, 'Political Correctness', Journal of Political Economy Vol. 109, No. 2 (2001), pp. 231-67
44. Eric Maskin & Jean Tirole, 'The politician and the judge: Accountability in government', American Economic Review, Vol. 94, No. 4 (2004), pp. 1034-54.
45. In these models voters are not viewed as rationally ignorant, but rather that they are misinformed as to best policy at a particular point in time. However, this avoids the problem of trying to explain why voters may consistently and persistently choose bad policies. Bryan Caplan, The Myth of the Rational Voter: Why Democracies Choose Bad Policies (Princeton University Press, 2000), discusses this issue in depth.
46. See http://www.hmtreasury.gov.uk/independent_reviews/ stern_review_economics_climate_change/stern_review_report.cfm.
47. See http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/4925444.stm; Iain McLean, 'Climate Change and UK Politics, from Brynle Williams to Sir Nicholas Stern', paper presented at the Conference of the European Consortium for Political Research, Pisa, 7-9 September 2007.