Positive and Normative Theories of Government

Randall Holcombe

Chapter 11 in The Economic Foundations of Government, 1994, pp 180-195 from Palgrave Macmillan

Abstract: Abstract Any discussion of government naturally points toward normative issues because government is the product of collective choice. In the preceding chapters, theories of governments, rights, and individuals’ relationships with each other and their governments were all discussed, but primarily in a positive setting that did not evaluate the desirability of these institutions. Factors that give the government an image of legitimacy were examined also, but from the standpoint of determining whether governments actually would be viewed as legitimate, rather than whether they should be viewed as legitimate. If the exchange model of government that has served as the foundation for the preceding discussion is valid, then at least to some degree the resulting government is a product of the collective choice of the governed. Constitutional rules are produced through some type of collective choice process, so normative issues are always present in the form of examining whether better constitutional rules could be developed. This chapter looks at the link between positive and normative theories of government.1

Keywords: Normative Theory; Social Welfare Function; Constitutional Rule; Positive Theory; Economic Foundation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 1994
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:pal:palchp:978-1-349-13230-0_11

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DOI: 10.1007/978-1-349-13230-0_11

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