Onwards and Upwards — James Buchanan at 80

Abstract

Anyone who has ever collaborated with Jim Buchanan will have learned that titles are important. One can spend several hours with Jim brainstorming to get something that is both descriptive and appropriately euphonious — and if nothing suitable emerges, you can be prepared to revisit the whole issue for days, even weeks sometimes, until the right note is struck. The results of this kind of effort can be seen in such nicely judged constructions as “The Calculus of Consent”, or “The Limits of Liberty”, or “Democracy in Deficit”, or “Politics without Romance”. I remember as an undergraduate student in far-off Australia finding on my reading list a piece entitled “Politics, Policy and the Pigovian Margins” and wondering long and hard at that title. What strange and wonderful imaginings those ‘Pigovian margins’ conjured in the young Geoffrey’s uninitiated mind. Not everyone, I guess, could strike poetry out of public economics — but Jim often managed this feat. And not least in his titles.

This paper is an edited version of an address delivered on the occasion of James Buchanan’s eightieth birthday celebrations, held on October third, 1999 in Falls Church, Virginia. It very much bears the marks of its status as an “occasional” piece. It is reproduced here because the editors felt that it would be of interest to a wider audience than the two hundred or so attendees at the celebratory dinner, and not least to the readership of Public Choice. From Public Choice, July 2000. [I am grateful to Jonathan Pincus for comments on an earlier version]