Alan Hamlin

• FAcSS
• Professor Emeritus at The University of Manchester

A growing literature has focussed attention on ‘expressive’ rather than ‘instrumental’ behaviour in political settings - particularly voting A common criticism of the expressive idea is that its myriad possibilities make it rather ad hoc and lacking in both predictive and normative bite. We agree that no single clear definition of expressive behavi...

The recent prominence of the ideal/non-ideal debate is largely due to the fact that it offers a vocabulary in which to diagnose what many see as a key problem of political theory: its relative unwillingness to provide solutions to urgent problems facing people here and now; or for people as they are rather than as they should be. The primary aim of...

There are two rival accounts of rational voting in the public choice tradition: the mainstream instrumental account, that sees the vote as a revelation of preference over possible electoral outcomes, essentially analogous to a market choice; and the expressive account, that sees the vote as expressing support for one or other electoral options, rat...

An essential feature of political representation is that a mediating assembly is set between the citizenry and political decision making. Representation involves indirect decision making or agency. Rational actor political theory often assumes representation in order to focus on problems of a principal–agent kind, but offers only relatively weak ar...

In the light of Giuseppe Eusepi’s career-long interest in the subjectivist element of James Buchanan’s work, my strategy here is to follow Eusepi by outlining and situating the variety of subjectivism discussed by Buchanan and, after some critical discussion, to attempt to track some of the implications of that subjectivism for the idea of constitu...

Rules are central to the constitutional political economy (CPE) approach. On this approach, rules, of a variety of types and forms, are necessary for the emergence of a political and social order, so that all genuine political order is rule-based. The central role of rules within the CPE approach is examined starting from an explicit definitional d...

The two volume Oxford Handbook of Public Choice provides a comprehensive overview of the Public Choice literature. Volume 1 covers rational choice models of elections, interest groups, rent seeking, and public choice contributions to normative political economy. It begins with introductory chapters on rational choice politics, the founding of publi...

Buchanan’s approach to political economy is often characterized as rejecting romance in favour of realism: as taking feasibility seriously. But Buchanan provides no detailed account of his understanding of feasibility. This chapter discusses the idea of feasibility and its role at the constitutional, political and individual levels of Buchanan’s wo...

The modern economics literature provides three approaches to the analysis of taxation: one focused on the optimal balancing of a variety of normative considerations, a second focused on the relationship between taxation and (democratic) political processes, and a third focused on the possibility of constitutional limitations on the power to tax. Th...

Cambridge Core - Political Theory - Methods in Analytical Political Theory - edited by Adrian Blau

Both the idea of feasibility and the role that it might play within political theory are controversial. Recent discussions have attempted to specify an appropriate overall conceptualization of feasibility. This essay offers a more nuanced account of a number of interrelated aspects of feasibility and argues for a more realistic view of feasibility....

We distinguish three forms of conservatism and focus attention on the form in which conservatives identify and recognize a value not recognised by non-conservatives. Starting from an attempt to rescue conservative values by G.A. Cohen, we provide an analysis of the requirements of such a conservative position and a formulation in terms of state-rel...

We explore the extent to which general considerations about the nature of social and political organization and the role of conventions in political life might provide a defence for the systematic status quo orientation that we take to characterise conservatism. We term this strand of conservative thought 'practical conservatism' because the conser...

Simple theory tells us that we cannot generally expect trade in finished goods to equalise the prices of untraded factors. Simple observation tells us that many factor prices do indeed display considerable and persistant international differences. The simple inference is that these factors are substantially non-traded. However, this raises more que...

Contractarianism and contractualism identify a range of positions in moral and political theory that is distinctive in terms of its emphasis on considerations of individualistic eligibility: social, political, or moral rules, norms, or institutions are to be explicated and justified by appeal to the extent to which they would be chosen, at least by...

Jan-Werner Müller provides a four-dimensional framework for comprehending conservatism as a political ideology. We focus on conservatism as a political philosophy, rather than an ideology, and provide more detailed analysis in order to re-assess Müller's framework; arguing that the suggested sociological and aesthetic dimensions do not play signifi...

The Reason of Rules stands as a key text in the development of Constitutional Political Economy (CPE). While the achievements of the book in further shifting attention towards the constitutionalist perspective and providing a wide ranging discussion of the demand for rules are acknowledged, I suggest that the account of rules provided there and whi...

What are Constitutions and, if Constitutions are constitutive, what do they constitute? Each of these questions might give rise to at least two different answers. In a legalistic vein a Constitution might be defined as a document or set of documents that codify the role and process of government by enumerating and limiting the powers of government...

This article characterizes politics, philosophy, and economics (PPE) as a substantive research programme as a flexible and analytic debate on the relations between the individual and society that incorporates both positive and normative analyses. This, in contrast to a view of PPE as a series of interdisciplinary or multidisciplinary topics. To thi...

Constitutional reform requires a cautious approach that draws heavily on the theory of institutions. Too often arguments for particular constitutional arrangements are one-dimensional and limited in scope and imagination. This article illustrates this theme by discussing the debate over fixed- and variable-term parliaments, and by offering a somewh...

We consider the relationship between positive and normative political theory, emphasising both the role of normative ideas in motivating political behaviour and particularly the constraints on normative theory imposed by positive theory. Our point of departure is Christiano's recent claim that the rational choice approach to positive and normative...

'Bygones are bygones' might seem to be an analytic truth, lacking any substantive content. Yet, economists think that, when they state that bygones are bygones, they are asserting something interesting and important. Furthermore, others would argue that the statement 'bygones are bygones', when read appropriately, is false. By interrogating the sta...

Corruption in the public sector erodes tax compliance and leads to higher tax evasion. Moreover, corrupt public officials abuse their public power to extort bribes from the private agents. In both types of interaction with the public sector, the private agents are bound to face uncertainty with respect to their disposable incomes. To analyse effect...

While the general idea of the welfare state may seem clear enough in practice, the content of the basic concept of welfare, the relationship between individual welfare and social welfare, and the relationship between any concept of welfare and the state are all disputed. the aim here is to provide a guide to at least some aspects of these disputes...

The concept of welfare and the nature of the welfare state are central themes of the normative political debate. But the word ‘welfare’ identifies a particularly contested part of the conceptual landscape that has been much trampled by economists, philosophers and political theorists, as well as a wide variety of more practical politicians, policy...

We model the choice of leaders of groups within society, where leaders influence both the mode of interaction between groups (either peaceful compromise or costly conflict) and the outcome of these interactions. Group members may choose leaders strategically/instrumentally or they may choose leaders expressively. We characterize the equilibria of t...

Recent joint work with Geoff Brennan has explored aspects of individual motivation that depart from the traditional economist's account of instrumental rationality in political and constitutional contexts. On several occasions we have argued for a dispositional account of aspects of motivation. Here I tackle the idea of a dispositional account of p...

This article looks at constitutions as expressive documents. Two concepts are the main focus of this article: the constitution and the notion of expressiveness. The article tries to clarify these concepts by appeal of a contrast, which will be between a constitution as a legal document and the more general idea of a constitution, which is envisaged...

'... our intent in this volume is to give an account of the theoretical endeavours of those who seek to construct an approach to the analysis of political decision making that derives largely from economics theory but also recognises and incorporates other areas of inquiry such as philosophy, more traditional political theory and psychology. This v...

We propose an analytic account of dispositional conservatism that attempts to uncover a foundation of what is often taken to be an anti-foundationalist position. We identify a bias in favour of the status quo as a key component of the conservative disposition and address the question of the justification of such a conservative disposition, and the...

International economists and other scholars address the major issues that arise in writing a European constitution, including the evolution of federalism and the role of direct democracy. The leaders of European Union member states have declared that a European constitution should take "a clear, open, effective, democratically controlled Community...

The following collection of articles focus on the role and status of the idea of the status quo in constitutional economics, and derive from a symposium held in May 2004 in Blacksburg, Virginia. This brief note provides an introduction both to the papers presented and to some of the issues raised in considering the status quo.

We construct models of the endogenous formation of political groups designed to capture some of the key features of political and social conflict. We draw on the `citizen candidate' approach and consider both instrumental and expressive approaches to understanding group formation and conflict between groups. We argue that the inclusion of expressiv...

Democracy is widely accepted today, perhaps as never before, as the most suitable form of government. But what is democracy, and does it always produce good government? Democracy is often associated with the existence of competitive elections. But theory and experience suggest that these are not sufficient for democracy to function reasonably well....

Here, Alan Hamlin revisits some of his earlier work on the moral basis, scope, and evaluation of markets, and extends his analysis to a global setting by considering both the international market place and its institutional foundations. His key questions are how does the changing form and extended geographical radius of the market (for goods, servi...

We argue that the standard Constitutional Political Economy defence of constitutionalism, that derives from an argument relating to the shift from narrowly self-interested motivations in the in-period context to relatively general-interest decision making in the constitutional context, is flawed precisely because it is intended to relate to essenti...

While visiting the Center for Study of Public Choice in April 1994 I was allowed to attend, as an observer, sessions of a seminar constructed as a meeting of co-authors of James Buchanan. At the end of one session, Jim was asked to reflect on the role of co-authorship. In responding, Jim identified a number of patterns of co-authorship — ranging fr...

We construct models of group formation designed to capture some of the key features of political and social competition. The models draw on the ‘citizen candidate’ approach and allow competition to be modelled as either compromise - where all groups influence outcomes; or conflict - where one group wins the right to dictate. We also consider both...

We focus attention on the ‘resilience’ property of republican liberty – a property that, at least in some formulations, is among those features that distinguish republican liberty from its more familiar ‘liberal’ counterpart. Our analysis suggests, and builds on, an analogy between resilience and risk aversion. After a brief description of what we...

This book offers a novel account of key features of modern representative democracy. Working from the rational actor tradition, it builds a middle ground between orthodox political theory and the economic analysis of politics. Standard economic models of politics emphasise the design of the institutional devices of democracy as operated by essentia...

This book, first published in 2000, offers an account of key features of modern representative democracy. Working from the rational actor tradition, it builds a middle ground between orthodox political theory and the economic analysis of politics. Standard economic models of politics emphasise the design of the institutional devices of democracy as...

We construct a simple model incorporating both citizen-candidates and proportional representation and investigate its properties in a basic case with a uniform distribution of citizen ideal points and pure policy motivations, and in further cases which allow of office rents and other distributions of preferences. The idea of citizen-candidates, dev...

In this essay, I will attempt to sketch out some of the consequences for the study of political institutions that follow from taking both rationality and morality as constitutive features of individual agents. This represents a departure from more standard lines of economic analysis which typically focus on rationality as the central characteristic...

Bruce Ackerman offers a view of American constitutional politics that stresses the fundamentally democratic nature of all American politics, and the increasingly national character of the American demos. The strength of the voice of the people, rather than constitutional due process, are the hallmark of episodes of constitutional reform. At the sam...

Our central aim is to explore the ideas involved in the claim that certain institutional structures economize on virtue and, in particular, to explore the widely held idea that reliance on institutions that economize on virtue may undermine virtue itself. We explore these ideas both by discussing alternative conceptions of virtue and economizing, a...

The doctrine of the separation of powers attracts almost universal support as a central element of the liberal constitution designed to protect citizens against governmental power. However, there is little agreement on, or analysis of, the precise institutional requirements of the doctrine or the method by which the claimed benefit is achieved. We...

Two relevant branches of economic analysis—the economics of regulation and the economics of rent seeking — are reviewed in order to assess the extent to which the basic structure of the recent reforms in UK higher education can be grounded in economic logic. Attention is paid to the essential nature of the higher education sector as a producer of b...

Public Choice analysis of democratic political institutions focuses on the issues that are most salient under US constitutional arrangements. Parliamentary systems offer different institutional arrangements and different challenges to the Public Choice approach. We outline a Public Choice account of parliamentary democracy which concentrates attent...

Public Choice analysis of democratic political institutions focuses on the issues that are most salient under US constitutional arrangements. Parliamentary systems offer different institutional arrangements and different challenges to the Public Choice approach. We outline a Public Choice account of parliamentary democracy which concentrates attent...

Recent papers have established that bicameralism can support a nonempty core in majority voting games in two-dimensional policy spaces. The authors generalize this result to the n-dimensional case and provide a discussion of multicameralism. Bicameralism generates a core of potentially stable equilibria by institutionalizing opposition between mutu...

Austrian economics is sometimes accused of inconsistency with respect to welfare economics. On the one hand, it is critical of the structure and practice of mainstream welfare economics with its flavor of social engineering; while on the other hand it is seen to be keen to propose particular policies in certain circumstances and to argue that these...

Ken Hilton’s early work as an economist with NEDO and subsequently at the University of Southampton included an examination of the inventory behaviour of the UK manufacturing sector. He was later to extend this work to international comparisons of stock/output ratios and to address the thorny problems of determining inventory behaviour when aggrega...

Arguments for the efficiency of federalism typically depend on a decentralization thesis and a competition thesis, both of which relate to mobility. In this essay, the author reviews and appraises these two lines of argument. The author suggests that the decentralization thesis is best seen not as an argument for the efficiency of federalism, but a...

Working capital is a necessary input to the production process and yet is ignored in most economic models of production. The implications of modelling the time dimension of production, and hence the working capital requirements of firms, are explored, with particular stress placed on the competitive advantage gained by firms that retain flexibility...

Proposals for tax harmonisation form a major and contentious part of the overall proposals for the unification of European markets in 1992. The European Commission has produced detailed proposals in respect of the harmonisation of indirect taxes — particularly VAT and excise duties (Commission of the European Communities, 1987) — and there are more...

The ability of firms to respond to varying economic circumstances is a vital aspect of their competitiveness. Firms that can react quickly and appropriately to unanticipated price shocks, for example, must clearly gain a competitive advantage relative to their less flexible rivals. Equally, if some industries or economies are inherently less flexib...

Economic approaches to both social evaluation and decision-making are typically Paretian or utilitarian in nature and so display commitments to both welfarism and consequentialism. The contrast between the economic approach and any rights-based social philosophy has spawned a large literature that may be divided into two branches. The first is conc...

Federalism is often argued to produce a particular problem in designing hori-Abstract zontal equity policy that may be partially overcome by the use of intergovernmental grants. The nature of the federal equity problem is reconsidered; it is argued that only a specific subclass offederations suffer from an inherent equity problem and that in these...

It has become customary to discuss the investment decision of the firm and the capital utilization decision separately. Both topics have commanded considerable attention in recent years (Nickell (1978), Betancourt and Clague (1981) provide good entry points into the literature) and, at the informal level, the links between utilization decisions and...

This paper explores the distinction between processes of decision making and their outcomes in the context of the individualistic constitutional calculus. The motivation is primarily methodological. A taxonomy and analytic framework are suggested which explicitly recognize the possible motivations of the constitution setter, and which allow decisio...

Attempts to estimate production functions, measure productivity or analyse investment decisions should explicitly concern themselves with the utilisation rate dimension of the flow of capital services. A number of the results already present in the literature with regard to the traditional profit-maximising firm and the labour-managed firm are pres...

Attempts to estimate production functions, measure productivity or analyse investment decisions should explicitly concern themselves with the utilisation rate dimension of the flow of capital services. A number of the results already present in the literature with regard to the traditional profit-maximising firm and the labour-managed firm are pres...

wage variation,1 but few simultaneous equations models of wage determination and the bargaining process bridging the two. An exception is the study of Geroski, Hamlin and Knight (1982) which (in the context of a two equation cross section model of wages and strike frequency) found that high strike frequency was not associated with high wage levels....

A popular image of the EEC is of a large group of politicians and ‘Eurocrats’ careering between Brussels, Strasbourg and Luxembourg engaged in long and detailed discussions ranging from the reform of the EEC budget to the standardisation of the definition of a sausage. The outcomes of these various summits, committees and round-table discussions ar...