Public Choice: an Overview

Public Choice begins with the observation that in politics, as in economics, individuals and institutions compete for scarce resources and that, therefore, the same methods of analyses used by economists to explain the behaviour of consumers and producers might also serve well to explain the behaviour of governments and other (allegedly) “public-spirited” organisations . As Tullock (1988) succinctly put it, Public Choice is "the invasion of politics by economics". Public Choice derives its rationale from the fact that, in many areas, 'political' and 'economic' considerations interact so that a proper understanding of issues in one field requires a complementary understanding of issues in the other. Although the incursion of the analytical methods of economics into political science - which is the hall-mark of Public Choice - began in the 1950s, it was not until at least three decades later that the trickle became a flood. This chapter provides an overview of this field

Voting Weights or Agenda Control: Which One Really Matters?

Much of the EU institution literature deals with the distribution of voting power in the Council and European Parliament. The increasingly sophisticated models on EU decision making tend to overlook issues pertaining agenda formation and control in various decision making bodies. This article argues that agenda control is extremely important in all collective decision making bodies. Indeed, agenda control may render the voting power distribution issue largely irrelevant.Agenda control, amendment procedure, no-show paradox, successive procedure

Third-Party and Independent Presidential Candidates: The Need for a Runoff Mechanism

Consider what 2016 might have looked like if this better electoral system had been in place. Bloomberg then could have entered the race without risking being a spoiler. In a three-way race—Bloomberg, Clinton, and Trump—Bloomberg might have fizzled out, leaving a two-way race between Clinton and Trump. Since that is essentially how the election ended up anyway, the country would have been no worse off for having had a chance to consider Bloomberg as an alternative. But suppose, however, with Trump’s candidacy spinning out of control in a series of unacceptable comments (as it appeared to do in early August),11 the American electorate might have preferred a head-to-head matchup between Bloomberg and Clinton, rather than one between Trump and Clinton. Maybe Clinton would have beaten Bloomberg in that head-to-head matchup. That is fine; that is a democratic choice reflecting the preference of the electorate. But maybe Bloomberg would have beaten Clinton. We will never know, because the actual system in place was not designed to enable the American electorate to have that choice. In this respect, the existing system is deficient. It deprives the American electorate of an option it should have. The purpose of this Article is to offer a repair for this deficiency

"The Myths of Turkish Influence in the European Union". University of Illinois EUC Working Paper Volume 6, No. 2, 2006

Among the many objections to Turkish membership in the European Union lie claims that Turkey will be a powerful actor in the future EU, with a population as large as or larger than Germany. Many also claim that this power will have negative effects on the EU. We examine such claims analytically, influenced strongly by spatial models of EU policy-making. We find that Turkey's preferences lie sufficiently outside the EU mainstream so that it will have little influence in day-to-day policy-making under the assent, codecision, consultation, and cooperation procedures (or the common procedure in the rejected constitutional treaty). Its influence may be more evident in areas such as the CFSP or JHA, where unanimity remains the normal procedure. Still, Turkey's veto power here is no different from that of other, much smaller countries. Furthermore, veto power can only block changes and cannot be used to pull the EU into undesirable new directions. Even this veto power can be avoided if the EU-25 establishes whatever policies they desire prior to Turkish membership, forcing Turkey to accept a fait accompli. Despite these limitations to its power, Turkey may have some influence in purely intergovernmental settings such as negotiations over new treaties that might occur some decades hence

On the Possibility of Democracy and Rational Collective Choice

The paper challenges the 'orthodox doctrine' of collective choice theory according to which Arrow’s 'general possibility theorem' precludes rational decision procedures generally and implies that in particular all voting procedures must be flawed. I point out that all voting procedures are cardinal and that Arrow’s result, based on preference orderings cannot apply to them. All voting procedures that have been proposed, with the exception of approval voting, involve restrictions on voters expressions of their preferences. These restrictions, not any general impossibility, are the cause of various well known pathologies. In the class of unrestricted voting procedures I favor 'evaluative voting' under which a voter can vote for or against any alternative, or abstain. I give a historical/conceptual analysis of the origins of theorists’ aversion to cardinal analysis in collective choice and voting theories

The Transformation of World Trade

This Article contests the traditional view of the evolution of the world trade system. Rather than a unidirectional process of legalization focused exclusively on the system\u27s normative structure, Part I of the Article, The Explosion of the GATT Club, recounts the transformation from GATT to WTO as a bidirectional interaction between law and politics; in particular, between the system\u27s legal-normative structure and its political, decision making branch Part II of this Article, The Threat of a WTO Fortress, challenges the view that a choice must be made between politics and law or, put differently, between, on the one hand, democratic representation, participation, contestation, and the inherent flexibility that comes with it and, on the other hand, discipline, pre-commitment, and some degree of government by experts or export driven interests shielded from capture and popular ignorance. On the contrary, my claim is that a legitimate and efficient trading system requires both politics and law, or more particularly, appropriate balances between participation and discipline, flexibility and pre-commitment, accountability and insulation, popular support and expertise, and input and output legitimacy

Bonding, Structure and the Stability of Political Parties: Party Government in the House

The public policy benefits that parties-deliver are allocated by democratic procedures that devolve ultimately to majority rule. Majority-rule decision making, however, does not lead to consistent policy choices; it is unstable. In this paper, we argue that institutions - and thereby policy coalitions -- can be stabilized by extra-legislative organization. The rules of the Democratic Caucus in the U.S. House of Representatives dictate that a requirement for continued membership is support on the floor of Caucus decisions for a variety of key structural matters. Because membership in the majority party’s caucus is valuable, it constitutes a bond, the posting of which stabilizes the structure of the House, and hence the policy decisions made in the House. We examine the rules of the House Democratic Caucus and find that they do in fact contain the essential elements of an effective, extralegislative bonding mechanism

Political Corruption and Electoral Systems Seen with Economists’ Lenses

The ongoing process of democratisation lead to the growing importance of the electoral systems that regulate the procedures of gaining and legitimizing power in democracy. Taking it into account it is worth asking about the relationship between these particular ‘game rules’ contained into electoral law and the respect of the rule of law, being one of the basic norms of a democratic system. A question then may be raised about the existence and the character of the relation between electoral systems and the level of political corruption. It is worth noticing that besides the research conducted by political scientists and the representatives of various branches of social sciences the significant analysis of the issue have been presented by the economists. In this article a brief overview of the economic studies on the relationship between level of political corruption and the electoral systems is presented so as to assess to what degree this approach may be treated as fruitful