This book provides a theory capable of explaining the patterns of public expenditures and taxation that occur under representative government. Economists and political scientists have come to realize that issues of public policy and public fi nance cannot be solved on the naive assumption that these are problems tackled by a government that exists only to serve the public good. Instead, government must be understood as one of the major economic institutions of society, one that behaves like more familiar economic institutions-the household and the fi rm-though the market it confronts is a...

Competitive Governments systematically explores the hypothesis that governments are internally competitive, that they are competitive in their relations with each other and in their relations with other institutions in society which, like them, supply consuming households with goods and services. Breton contends that competition not only serves to bring the political system to an equilibrium, but it also leads to a revelation of the households' true demand functions for publicly provided goods and services and to the molding of a link between the quantities and the qualities demanded and...

This is a systematic exploration of the hypothesis that governments are internally competitive, that they are competitive in their relations with each other and in their relations with other institutions in society which, like them, supply consuming households with goods and services. The author contends that competition not only serves to bring the political system to an equilibrium, but it also leads to a revelation of the households' true demand functions for publicly provided goods and services, and to the molding of a link between the quantities and the qualities demanded and supplied...

In this work the authors present a general theory of bureaucracy and use it to explain behaviour in large organizations and to explain what determines efficiency in both governments and business corporations. The theory uses the methods of standard neoclassical economic theory. It relies on two central principles: that members of an organization trade with one another and that they compete with one another. Authority, which is the basis for conventional theories of bureaucracy, is given a role, despite reliance on the idea of trade between bureaucracies. It is argued, however, that...

This is a collection of essays by well-known economists and political scientists from both North America and Europe on the nature of democracy.

Why is nationalism so widespread today? How does the phenomenon arise? This collection of essays by leading social scientists tries to answer these questions at the forefront of contemporary political discussion. The work differs from others in that the authors' responses are not based on avowed ideological perspectives but are rather drawn from rational-choice analysis. The collection focuses on three subjects--the origins of nationalism, whether and why it promotes good or evil, and how to deal with its occasional destructive consequences.

The distinguishing feature of this collection by well-known economists and political scientists from North America, Europe, and Australia is to propose a variety of explanations that all insist on the rationality of extremism. The authors identify four core issues in the study of extremism: the nature (definition) of extremism and its origins in both democratic and authoritarian settings, the capacity of democratic political systems to accommodate extremist positions, the strategies (civil disobedience, assassination, lynching) chosen by extremist groups, and the circumstances under which...