Public choice and three ethical properties of politics

Joe Oppenheimer

Public Choice, 1985, vol. 45, issue 3, 255 pages

Abstract: Three major public choice findings about politics are analyzed for their implications regarding ethics and ethical analysis. The assumption that governments supply collective goods, and the ensuing implication that it is rational to stay ignorant is shown to decrease the moral involvement of the individual in political behavior. The difficulty of obtaining a stable political outcome with regard to distributive issues is shown to affect the relationship between fair political procedures and the attainment of justice. It is argued that the pursuit of justice may require the abandonment of procedural fairness. Implications of these findings for ethical reasoning are then discussed. Finally, questions regarding the relationship between the rather imperfect findings of the public choice theorist and their ethical implications for the political philosopher are raised. Copyright Martinus Nijhoff Publishers 1985

Date: 1985
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1007/BF00124022 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:kap:pubcho:v:45:y:1985:i:3:p:241-255

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer. ... ce/journal/11127/PS2

DOI: 10.1007/BF00124022

Access Statistics for this article

Public Choice is currently edited by WIlliam F. Shughart II

More articles in Public Choice from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().