Public Policy and Constitutional Prescription

Gordon Rausser and Pinhas Zusman

American Journal of Agricultural Economics, 1992, vol. 74, issue 2, 247-257

Abstract: In public policy analysis, much confusion exists about the roles of explanation and prescription. To offer a new perspective, a paradigm is developed that gives both theoretical and empirical meaning to the constitutional determination of political preference functions or public sector governance structures. Current policies are viewed as a rational outcome of a political-economic process. Three relevant spaces are specified: result, policy instrument, and constitutional. For the policy instrument space, the paradigm provides a framework for generating testable propositions on government behavior, while, for the constitutional space, the framework is prescriptive. The collective-choice rules of the constitutional space structure the tradeoff between public and special interests.

Date: 1992
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:oup:ajagec:v:74:y:1992:i:2:p:247-257.

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