Reviews for The calculus of consent

The average rating for The calculus of consent based on 2 reviews is 4.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2009-01-10 00:00:00 Georgianna Somolik The Calculus of Consent is one of the classic works in the public choice literature. This work presents what has come to be the basic principles of public choice theory. Traditionally political scientists had defined the political process as a system in which decisions about public policy is viewed through the lens of a struggle between “public” and “private” interests. Instead, Buchanan and Tullock suggest that the “public interest” is simply an aggregation of private decision makers. They contend that in classical political science theory, the policy that is in the “public interest” is always the correct choice and always appeals to all voters. But that theory ignores the fact that most policy choices appeal to different groups to different degrees. For example, when confronted with a proposed increase in defense spending some voters while either strongly oppose or favor it, but most will prove to be largely indifferent. They compare this state of affairs to transactions that take place in a market setting, where the voters strongly desiring a certain policy could purchase the acceptance of the opposition and indifferent voters with concessions, resulting in an efficient allocation of resources, increasing the well-being of all parties involved. However the equivalent of this in the realm of the political process is that politicians buy the votes of other politicians (or groups of special-interests) by promising to vote for their issues. Buchanan and Tullock are of the opinion that “pork-barrel politics” such as this is what we should expect to see as the norm, but in the traditional political science theory, it is anomalous. Which is to say, that their model presents a more accurate and complete model of political decision-making than previous models of politics.

Review # 2 was written on 2019-11-20 00:00:00 Lia Waroka Engineered to perfection like revolutionary clockwork, Buchanan & Tullock's classic text is one of the most important works of political economy in the 20st Century. On the face of it, is an economizing theory of constitutional democracy, but it is much more than that. It ingeniously synthesizes several strands in political philosophy, political science, rational choice theory, and welfare economics. Every chapter is a gold mine of tantalizing premises and simple yet suggestive models leading to counter-intuitive but compelling conclusions with the help of logically airtight arguments. The book famously relies on rather restrictive and dubious assumptions about Homo economicus that it imports from neoclassical economics (and to a lesser extent from the "realist" school of political philosophy going back to Machiavelli and Hobbes). And, in addition, it can be accused of smuggling in cultural biases about the inherent superiority of American constitutionalism. But these limitations impose an awesome discipline on the enterprise. The authors perform such amazing feats, ranging from novel methodological innovations to constitutional revolutions, with these assumptions that the end result transcends methodological or cultural limitations. Calculus of Consent is a bottomless wishing well of innovative research programs. A new theory of constitutional democracy? Check. A revitalization of contractarian thinking? Check. A pioneering application of the economic exchange logic into politics? Check. A tentative proof of the need to apply the same model of human behaviour across all domains of human action (the behavioural symmetry assumption)? Check. A novel rediscovery of the Wicksellian unanimity principle of decision making as the appropriate political equivalent of the Pareto criterion? Check. A groundbreaking explanation of the surprising utility of logrolling in majoritarian democratic politics? Check... This book has so much exciting and novel stuff on its 300 pages! The writing can be extremely dry, no doubt. But if you want to read Harry Potter, there's a time and a place for that. No, you come here for the harsh and brutal scientific epiphanies. Another objection correctly argues that the deductive premises of the book rely on behavioural premises that have come under a lot of fire and criticism. As a result, the policy conclusions are only exploratory and hypothetical, as the authors confess. They need to be tested empirically for validity. But without such models, there can be no advancement in science! Such models find their scientific anchor in the solid predictions and falsifiable hypotheses that the book (rightfully) celebrates as its proudest achievements. The freedom of the spirit, the pure spirit of Science, that soars in their mathematical and logical models, is an engine of the imagination that dreams of new futurities. Abstractions, too, have the potential to revolutionize the practical organization of Western democratic politics. This, my friends, is a Titan among books. There is no school of political science or political philosophy that can dismiss all of its theses. If you try to run away and hide from this book, it will follow you home, find you, and kill you (or your illusions). It will laugh in the face of the destruction it brings. It challenges several hundred years of established wisdom! Although the book's arguments or conclusions can be contested they cannot be ignored. Like Rawls or Nozick, Buchanan & Tullock have created a contemporary classic of the highest order. It may not immediately pull at the heartstrings of the masses or inspire the songs of youth, but its dry, Apollonian exterior masques a Dionysian interior that sparks joy, wonder, and potency.