Political Ethics and Public Policy

Randall Holcombe

Chapter 12 in The Economic Foundations of Government, 1994, pp 196-209 from Palgrave Macmillan

Abstract: Abstract This chapter begins with the premise that societies have the ability to choose the characteristics of their governments. It is not an analysis of the public choice process, however, but a discussion about how individuals within a society would determine what governmental characteristics are desirable — that is, what characteristics they should want to choose. As a starting point, individuals will desire institutions that benefit them, and if social interaction were a zero-sum game, politics would simply amount to trying to balance the interests of some against the interests of others. But social interaction is not a zero-sum game, and productive institutional structures can generate benefits for everyone. The challenges are to identify productive institutional changes, and to identify ways to get them implemented.

Keywords: Policy Proposal; Free Rider Problem; Economic Foundation; Contractarian Model; Positive Analysis (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_12

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DOI: 10.1007/978-1-349-13230-0_12

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