Abstract
The main purpose of this chapter is to examine the problems of information in a democracy and their effect on logrolling and particular logrolling transfers. It is necessary first, however, to look a little more carefully into the welfare implications of logrolling. I should say here — for the benefit of those interested in income transfers who are not accustomed to economic reasoning and to particular economic applications in political problems — that we always use examples with a very small number of people simply because such examples are easier to deal with. These examples are intended to be small-scale models of real-world situations. In our very small models of only a few people, however, negotiations between the parties would probably eliminate the problems that lead to the outcomes we predict. Thus, the small-scale model is in this respect unrealistic. In essence, we assume that no negotiations or bargaining take place among the very small number of people that could not take place within a group of 100,000. All of this makes the reasoning easier to follow and does not affect the conclusion, but it does give a certain aura of unreality to the discussion.
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References
Gordon Tullock and T. Nicholas Tideman, “A New and Superior Process for Making Social Choices,” Journal of Political Economy, (October 1976): 1145–1159.
Twelve feet.
It is not necessarily sensible to think hard about it.
Economic Analysis of Democracy (Harper, 1958), 207–219. See also my Toward a Mathematics of Politics (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1967), 100-114.
Intellectuals characteristically are not quite totally devoted to one party. It is part of their self-image as an intellectual that they cast at least a few votes every election for the other party.
This last category may contain a very large number of the readers of this book and their friends.
V. Pareto, Cours D’Economic Polotique (1896). In S.E. Finer (ed.), Sociological Writings, translated by Derick Mirfin (London: Pall Mall Press, 1966).
This is particularity true since valuable minerals are, in fact, found under only a small part of the earth’s surface. Specific areas would be devastated if the surface was stripped off to get a big seam of coal, but the total land area so mined would be a very small part of the total wilderness.
The rental value of the space occupied by such things as larger washroom compartments and special parking, is probably very considerable, looking over the country as a whole.
The amount is an oral estimate, not based on very much research, by a senior government economist.
There is, in a way, a third — that is, if the number of people in the pressure group is very small. The public good argument does not apply with much force to such small groups.
Richard E. Wagner, “Pressure Groups and Political Entrepreneurs: A Review Article,” in Gordon Tullock (ed.), Papers on Non-Market Decision Making, (Charlottesville: Thomas Jefferson Center for Political Economy, University Press Virginia, 1966): 162–170.
See James M. Buchanan, Robert D. Tollison, and Gordon Tullock (eds.), Toward a Theory of The Rent-Seeking Society (College Station, TX: Texas A & M Press, 1981).
In my opinion, in this case it was indeed proper to leave the product on the market and, in fact, the Consumer Product Saftey Agency never would have taken the matter up at all had not another equally minor special interest wanted it banned. Nevertheless, the resources invested here by the two sides were, in net, socially wasteful.
Notably, here, the pressure group representatives are subsidized since although the costs of their seats, and the seats of the congressmen who are their guests, are very high, they are nowhere near the cost of maintaining the Kennedy Center.
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Tullock, G. (1997). Information and Logrolling. In: Economics of Income Redistribution. Studies in Public Choice, vol 11. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-011-5378-2_3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-011-5378-2_3
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