Abstract
The reasons one should appreciate public choice are the same reasons that many people, including many economists, find it deeply unsettling. Public choice would not be where it is today without James Buchanan and Gordon Tullock. Nor would I likely be where I am today without their help. Both men had a large effect on my thinking early in my intellectual life, and both men gave me generous attention when I was only 20 years old. In this chapter, I reminisce about my particular experiences with them. I then propose that the public choice research agenda be extended, more than it has been, to analysis of foreign policy, and then give the results of one such analysis.
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Notes
- 1.
I tell this story at greater in length in Chap. 2, “Hooked on Economics,” in David R. Henderson, The Joy of Freedom: An Economist’s Odyssey, Upper Saddle River, New Jersey: Financial Times Prentice Hall, 2001.
- 2.
Klein, Daniel (2005) The people’s romance. Indep Rev X(1):5–37.
- 3.
Buchanan, James M. (1993) Better than plowing and other personal essays. University of Chicago Press, Chicago, p 49.
- 4.
Tullock, Gorden (2007) Open secrets of American foreign policy. World Scientific Publishing, New Jersey, p 96.
- 5.
Buchanan, James M., Better than Plowing, p. 57.
- 6.
James M. Buchanan, Better than Plowing, p. 100.
- 7.
See David R. Henderson and Zachary Gochenour, “Wars and Presidential Greatness,” at: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2029774
- 8.
That insight is in David R. Henderson, “The Economics of War and Foreign Policy: What’s Missing?” Defense & Security Analysis 23(1):87–100, March 2007 and earlier in Jeffrey Rogers Hummel, “National Goods Versus Public Goods: Defense, Disarmament, and Free Riders,” in The Review of Austrian Economics. 4:88–122, 1990.
- 9.
Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations, Volume 2, Book IV, Chap. 7, Part III, p. 129.
- 10.
This was first laid out in Anthony Downs, An Economic Theory of Democracy, New York: Harper and Brothers, 1957, and has become a staple of public-choice thinking.
- 11.
Of course, one could argue that this was not analysis of foreign policy because Britain “owned” the 13 colonies. I’m indebted to Chad Seagren for this caveat.
- 12.
The following draws on Henderson, “Economics of War and Foreign Policy,” p. 98. It is not an exact quote.
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Henderson, D.R. (2013). Public Choice and Two of Its Founders: An Appreciation. In: Lee, D. (eds) Public Choice, Past and Present. Studies in Public Choice, vol 28. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-5909-5_11
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-5909-5_11
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