Buchanan and Clubs, How Dubious Was the Concept? A Comment on Darity, Camara, and MacLean

Alain Marciano

History of Economics Review, 2024, vol. 87, issue 1, 1-10

Abstract: In a recent article, William Darity, M’Balou Camara and Nancy MacLean (2023) argue that economist W. H. Hutt was a white supremacist. In their analysis, Darity et al. refer to a claim Hutt made about ‘exclusive clubs’ in a paragraph in which they also mention James Buchanan’s article on clubs (1965) and segregation in Virginia in the 1950s and 1960s. Although Darity et al. do not claim that Hutt’s racism, segregation and Buchanan’s clubs are connected, a careless reading of the paragraph could lead to misinterpretations. This comment was written to remind readers why Buchanan invented the concept of clubs and is to show that no evidence can be given to defend the idea that Buchanan’s theory of clubs would have been envisaged as a segregationist tool. Buchanan was trying to deal with a problem of public finance – the pricing of public goods.

Date: 2024
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DOI: 10.1080/10370196.2023.2289254

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