Roger Congleton

• Ph. D. Economics
• Professor at West Virginia University

The constitutional environment in which rent seeking takes place has significant effects on the extent of rent-seeking activities. It creates the rules that determine contest success functions, and it creates linkages among contests for political influence. The first half of the paper develops a theory of linked rent-seeking within a democratic con...

A variety of complementarities and overlaps exist between the psychological strand of behavioral economics and the subjectivist strand of Virginia Political Economy. This paper provides an overview of those commonalities and places them in a common information processing framework. The framework can account for systematic mistakes, framing effects,...

In the ordinary course of life, choices vary with age and other factors because one’s opportunities vary with one’s circumstances. Thus, investments in and expenditures on healthcare (and most other things) vary with age and a variety of other factors, including whether one lives in a rural area, suburb, or central city, health risks, risk aversion...

An important issue associated with empirical research is the extent to which statistical results continue to hold in the post-sample period. Although many tests of robustness within the period of a given study are routinely reported, relatively little attention is paid to model performance in the post-sample period. This paper examines the post-sam...

This paper analyzes how governance by true believers differs from that by ordinary idealists and pragmatists. To do so, the paper develops a semi-lexicographic framework for analyzing behavior of persons who have internalized belief systems with “supreme” duties. It uses that framework to analyze the extent to which such duties tend to affect priva...

Gordon Tullock’s “Welfare Costs of Tariffs, Monopolies, and Theft” is by now widely regarded to be a classic work in public choice. However, like many “classic papers,” it was not always so highly regarded. It was rejected at several journals before finding its way to print and arguably took two or three decades to be fully appreciated. This paper...

The governorships of Jesse Ventura of Minnesota and Arnold Schwarzenegger of California provide two natural experiments for testing the institutionally induced stability hypothesis. Both men rose to their governorships through unique career and electoral paths that would reduce the stabilizing effects of partisan commitments and electoral competiti...

American liberalism emerged before the most famous European liberal intellectuals put their pens to paper. It was grounded partly on liberal ideas that were in the air before those works were written, but mostly on the attractive communities generated by liberal institutions and policies. American liberalism is empirically, rather than theoreticall...

After War World II, a group of scholars began using rational choice models from economics and game theory to examine the manner in which public policies would be determined if men and women were as “rational” in their political activities as they were in other spheres of life. The implications of such an approach to politics were not obvious and to...

This paper develops a model of voter choices regarding tax-financed healthcare R&D and healthcare, and provides statistical evidence that is consistent with the theoretical analysis. Healthcare expenditures and the level of healthcare technology are not entirely independent phenomena, as often assumed in theoretical and empirical work. Voter intere...

James Buchanan wrote many short pieces on human nature and on the weaknesses of the rational choice model used by mainstream economics. Although he normally used such models in his own work, he recognized that their usefulness was limited to only a subset of choice settings. This chapter provides the rule-based model of choice that Buchanan may hav...

The incremental reform hypothesis implies that constitutions are rarely adopted whole cloth but instead emerge gradually from a series of reforms. The starting point, scope for bargaining, and number of reforms thus jointly determine the trajectory of constitutional history. We test the relevance of this theory for Africa by analysing the formation...

Robert Tollison was the most prolific of the second generation of public choice scholars from the Virginia School. Tollison’s many applications of the economic approach to politics, law, regulations and religion demonstrate that narrow self-interest can account for a broad range of political, economic, and other social phenomena. In addition, Tolli...

Gordon Tullock wrote widely on the emergence and effects of political and legal institutions. Although he did not provide an analytical narrative, perse, his work provides explanations for the emergence of the state, civil law, constitutional law, and democracy. When his work is organized as a historical narrative, it becomes clear that conflict, r...

This article provides an overview of Mancur Olson’s Logic of Collective Action and its impact on Olson’s subsequent work. It also suggests that the implications of his simple, elegant, theory have not yet been fully worked out. To illustrate this point, the second half of the essay demonstrates that the number of privileged and latent groups and th...

The quest for benefit from existing wealth or by seeking privileged benefit through influence over policy is known as rent seeking. Much rent seeking activity involves government and political decisions and is therefore in the domain of political economy, although it can also take place in personal relations and within firms and bureaucracies. Rent...

Gordon Tullock’s impact as a scholar was far broader than his own research because he was an initiator of new fields of research rather than one who modestly extended pre-existing pastures. His import as founding editor of Public Choice, as an ambassador for public choice, and as a teacher, mentor, and friend for public choice scholars around the w...

Constitutional political economy was the field in which James Buchanan devoted the most effort and to which he made the largest contribution. Although his finely grained arguments cannot be easily summarized, the main developments and central line of reasoning can be covered in a single paper, because his research relied upon a single framework, wh...

This paper analyzes a source of path dependency in institutions. Within a bargaining theory of reform, the starting point, domain of bargaining, and number of bargains reached determine the path of institutional change. We test this theory by focusing on the independence constitutions of Africa that were negotiated during the 1950s. We find that th...

Rent seeking activity is largely assumed to be a phenomenon involving efforts to obtain unearned benefits from government. However, rent-seeking losses are far more general than that case. This paper demonstrates that efforts to curtail rent-seeking losses can explain much about organizational design.

This chapter suggests that Tullock has made more profound contributions to constitutional political economy and other related fields than he is unrecognized for, in part because he himself has failed to recognize them. Gordon is not self-consciously pursuing the profound, but simply pushing out the frontiers of knowledge in as many directions as oc...

This paper provides a tightly written overview and modest extension of the constitutional exchange and evolution model developed in Perfecting Parliament and uses that approach to analyze the division of authority that one would expect to see in contemporary constitutional governments. The analysis suggests that constitutions tend to be written, ba...

In the 25-year period between 1960 and 1985, social insurance and transfer programs expanded greatly in all Western countries. The fraction of GDP accounted for by government expenditures approximately doubled in much of Europe and grew by 40% to 50% in most other OECD nations. After 1985, there has been relatively little growth in the scope of the...

This paper provides an overview of the history of American liberalism. Its focus is on constitutional documents, laws, and speeches rather than books written by intellectuals, because that is where the clearest statements of liberalism, surprisingly, are found. The paper provides more excerpts from documents in the early colonial period than from l...

This paper provides a tightly written overview and modest extension of the constitutional exchange and evolution model developed in Perfecting Parliament and uses that approach to analyze the division of authority that one would expect to see in contemporary constitutional governments. The analysis suggests that constitutions tend to be written, ba...

OECD countries have used a variety of mechanisms for subsidizing healthcare for more than a century. These include tax preferences, direct subsidies, mandated health insurance programs, government-financed single-payer systems, and direct provision of healthcare services. In most cases, combinations of tax-financed systems are used along with direc...

This paper develops a model of crisis and collapse, which is used to analyze the relative survivability of communities with alternative political institutions. The analysis suggests that communities with relatively democratic, decentralized, and flexible crisis managemen systems tend to do better than those with rigid, centralized crisis management...

Relatively liberal economic and political institutions emerged earlier in America than appreciated by most social scientists. They did not emerge in one great leap forward, but through a gradual process of experimentation, yardstick competition, and constitutional bargaining during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. As in Europe during the n...

The bailouts of 2008–10 are the most recent in a long series of insurance-like policies designed to limit the losses of those harmed by a crisis of some kind—but enacted after a crisis is under way. This paper analyzes the economics and politics of “crisis insurance” programs. The analysis helps explain why ex-post insurance is popular, why it ten...

particular territory is very large, and extends well beyond the basic civil and criminal codes of conduct that first come to mind. Regulations limit the range of goods that can be produced and sold, the hours that can be worked, and wages that can be paid. Tax laws determine the portion of income that laborers are allowed to keep, and the portion o...

The last two decades have witnessed a remarkable period of constitutional development and reform as a great wave of constitution based democratization has swept through South America, Africa, Europe, and Asia. In nearly all cases, constitution writers confronted national populations that were far from ethnically homogeneous. In the former

This paper provides an explanation for the lack of profit-maximizing local governments and for the historically widespread use of more or less representative forms of town and city governance. The analytical part of the paper suggests that profit-maximizing governments suffer from a “proprietor’s dilemma,” which can be reduced by including a repres...

This paper analyzes the constitutional history of China, with the aim of explaining how and why the policies that produced its rapid growth came to be adopted. The paper argues that constitutional reforms played important roles in China's economic development and are likely to do so in the future. Changes in the political rules of the game increase...

This paper provides a rational choice-based analysis of the causes and consequences of surprise events. The paper argues that ignorance may be rational, but nonetheless produce systematic mistakes, inconsistent behavior, and both pleasant and unpleasant surprises. If ignorance and unpleasant surprises are commonplace and relevant for individual and...

This paper provides a rational choice-based analysis of the causes and consequences of surprise events. The paper argues that ignorance may be rational, but nonetheless produce systematic mistakes, inconsistent behavior, and both pleasant and unpleasant surprises. If ignorance and unpleasant surprises are commonplace and relevant for individual and...

This paper analyzes the formation, refinement, and evolution of organizational decisionmaking processes, e.g. organizational governments. In doing so, it develops a framework for analyzing a broad cross section of private and non-private formal organizations. Formal organizations are all founded, e.g. they have a beginning. As a consequence, decisi...

Voluntary and coercive relationships among person play important roles in ethics, political theory, and Western law. This essay attempts to clarify the meaning and limits of coercion using matrix representations of voluntary and coercive proposals. Two settings are focused on in this paper: the first is one in which an outsider can make explicit or...

This book explains why contemporary liberal democracies are based on historical templates rather than revolutionary reforms; why the transition in Europe occurred during a relatively short period in the nineteenth century; why politically and economically powerful men and women voluntarily supported such reforms; how interests, ideas, and pre-exist...

This paper analyzes the constitutional history of China, with the aim of explaining how and why the policies that produced its rapid growth came to be adopted. The paper argues that constitutional reforms played important roles in China's economic development and are likely to do so in the future. Changes in the political rules of the game increase...

In the 25-year period between 1960 and 1985, there was a great expansion of welfare state programs throughout the West. The fraction of GDP accounted for by social expenditures doubled in much of Europe and grew by 40–50% in many other OECD nations. After 1985, growth in social insurance programs slowed relative to other parts of the economy. This...

The history of Spain is not usually associated with liberalism or constitutional innovation by most English or American historians. This paper provides a brief history of the rise of liberalism in Spain and uses the Constitution of 1812 as a window into the political liberalism of Spain in the early nineteenth century. That constitution makes it cl...

Terrorist incidents have occurred in the United States and around the world for centuries. Tax revolters, anarchists, war protesters, and other critics of government policy have often used violence to send messages to the policymakers controlling the issues of interest. The attacks of September 11, 2001, for example, have been widely interpreted as...

Voluntary and coercive relationships among person play important roles in ethics, political theory, and Western law. This essay attempts to clarify the meaning and limits of coercion using matrix representations of voluntary and coercive proposals. Two settings are focused on in this paper: the first is one in which an outsider can make explicit or...

This paper argues that liberalism helped the West escape from their long-standing rent-extracting regimes and created institutional sources of comparative advantage in trade and economic development. It does so by providing connections between three different literatures: the constitutional political economy literature, the rent-seeking literature,...

This book explains why contemporary liberal democracies are based on historical templates rather than revolutionary reforms; why the transition in Europe occurred during a relatively short period in the nineteenth century; why politically and economically powerful men and women voluntarily supported such reforms; how interests, ideas, and preexisti...

This extensive book explores in detail a wide range of topics within the public choice and constitutional political economy tradition, providing a comprehensive overview of current work across the field.

This paper analyzes the design, refinement, and evolution of organizational policymaking processes, that is to say, organizational governance. Governance procedures like other aspects of organization are refined through time to advance formeteur interests. Several mechanisms of evolution are explored in this paper. First, formal organizations have...

This review essay focuses on the subset of Gordon Tullock’s research that contributes to the constitutional political economy (CPE) research program. His most direct work on constitutional political economy is his joint work with James Buchanan, The Calculus of Consent (1962), which is widely acknowledged to be a classic work in the field. A good d...

U.S. policies to promote home ownership and other banking regulatory decisions helped to create a highly leveraged international market for mortgage-based securities. Declines in the price of housing, consequently, had major effects on the balance sheets and portfolios of financial institutions throughout the world. The political response to the f...

In this paper, we attempt to determine whether a president’s job experience affects his or her effectiveness in office. Several studies link national economic performance with the party of the president and Congress. Several others have argued that past economic performance is a factor in voter decisions, especially among independents, to vote for...

As is true of many books, the title suggests a topic that is a bit different from the one actually developed in the book. The welfare state is a productive state that provides services for people living in a polity. At the beginning of the modern era of political theory, Hobbes' suggested that the state should provide law and order in his Leviathan...

This paper provides an overview of the financial crisis of 2008 and the public policies adopted to address the crisis within the United States.The first half of the paper suggests that the crisis was not a complete surprise, but reflects mistakes in regulations and other policies in the past decade or so, especially with respect to housing and fina...

This paper provides an overview of public choice models of policy formation in areas that affect the distribution of income and wealth within and among nations. Three broad areas of policy are analyzed: (i) economic liberalization and public education, (ii) corruption and rent seeking, and (iii) the welfare state. Public choice analysis shows how i...

The economics literature on mercantilism tends to emphasize gold hoarding and external barriers to trade as defining characteristics. However, medieval institutions included a host of internal barriers to trade as well as external ones. High offices were often for sale as were monopoly privileges. We analyze how a stable unitary government's regula...

This paper develops a model of self-interested norm-driven behavior and uses it to analyze public policy formation within a democracy. If voters are concerned with broad normative issues, politicians will take policy positions in part to advance voter interests in "virtue" or "the public interest" as voters assess it. Consequently, many of the laws...

Constitutional democracy in the United States emerged very gradually through a long series of constitutional bargains in the course of three centuries. No revolutions or revolutionary threats were necessary or evident during most of the three century–long transition to constitutional democracy in America. As in Europe, legislative authority gradual...

America’s early constitutional development owes a good deal to the experience and policies of the Dutch republic. Many of the parallels are direct: In the late 16th century, the Dutch fought a successful war to secede from a major empire. They wrote a declaration of independence and adopted a federal model of Republican governance almost exactly tw...

The economics literature on mercantilism tends to emphasize gold hoarding and external barriers to trade as defining characteristics. Medieval institutions, however, included a host of internal barriers to trade as well as external ones, and monopoly privileges and high offices were often for sale. In this paper, we analyze how a stable unitary gov...

The quest for rents has always been part of human behavior. People have long fought and contended over possessions, rather than directing abilities and resources to productive activity. The great empires and conquests were the consequences of successful rent seeking. Resources were also expended in defending the rents that the empires provided. The...

This paper provides an overview of public choice models of policy formation in areas that affect the distribution of income and wealth within and among nations. Three broad areas of policy are analyzed: (i) economic liberalization and public education, (ii) corruption and rent seeking, and (iii) the welfare state. Public choice analysis shows how i...

In the late sixteenth century, the Dutch fought a successful war to secede from a major empire. They wrote a declaration of independence and adopted a federal model of Republican governance almost exactly two hundred years before the Americans. The Dutch republic and its political institutions subsequently inspired and protected enlightenment schol...

Normative analyses of the properties of alternative regulations should take account of political as well as economic factors. Economic approaches that neglect how political constraints affect prospects for adoption and implementation will support regulations that tend to fail in practice, because the political equilibrium generated by the new regul...

This paper provides an economic explanation for the tax veto authority of medieval parliament and for the gradual and peaceful shift of policymaking authority from kings to parliaments that occurred in the nineteenth century. The domain of possible power assignments within a divided government is multidimensional and essentially continuous. This al...

This paper examines some neglected implications of altruism in deterministic voting models in settings where voters differ in their altruistic propensities. Of particular interest is the extent to which relatively small groups of altruistic voters can affect electoral outcomes by simply casting votes. Ordinarily, in deterministic electoral models o...

The domestic politics of globalization are essentially as old as globalization itself. Trade and other international transactions affect a broad spectrum of individual economic interests. For example, relatively less-efficient domestic firms lose, and importers and consumers desiring goods produced abroad benefit. Domestic philosophers and religiou...

This paper investigates whether individuals might voluntarily join and remain members of a state in which high levels of social insurance are provided. That is to say, are there plausible circumstances in which a social welfare state can be regarded as “liberal” in the sense that it has the universal support of its citizens? As a point of departure...

Condorcet's jury theorem provides a possible explanation for the success of democracies relative to other forms of governance since the late industrial revolution. In its modern form, the jury theorem predicts that majority decisions will be well informed, because they are based on far more information than possessed by any single voter. On the oth...

This paper examines the recent decentralization of governance in Indonesia and its impact on local infrastructure provision. The decentralization of decisionmaking power to local jurisdictions in Indonesia may have improved the matching of public infrastructures provision with local preferences. However, decentralization has made local public infra...

This paper explores some implications of the existence of politically active groups within dictatorships. The analysis reaches the more or less plausible conclusion that dictators will treat supporters differently than opponents and that a dictator often lacks a significant encompassing interest, because different groups are more or less important...

This paper uses some recent work from constitutional political economy to analyze the politics of Japan as it shifted from a medieval empire or federation to a modern parliamentary state in the late nineteenth century. The analysis suggests that the Tokugawa period, the Meiji restoration, and its transition to constitutional monarchy can be underst...

The domain of possible power assignments within a multicameral government is multidimensional and essentially continuous. This allows policymaking authority to be divided in many ways and also allows constitutional exchange to take place along many margins of power. This internal market for authority over budgets and public policy allows policymaki...

This paper provides an overview of the politics of crisis management using a minor, but significant extension of the core rational choice models of political decision making. The focus of analysis is crisis management within democratic polities, although much of it will also apply to crisis management within private organizations and indeed for per...

This paper analyzes the public policies that lead to ‘`Katrina,’' paying particular attention to political decisions that created unusual risks in the New Orleans area. Most of the deaths from hurricane Katrina were concentrated in one place, New Orleans, and those losses arose in large part from its location in combination with its three century l...

This paper analyzes the extent to which international public goods and agency problems are present in international organizations. A noncooperative model of the funding choices of donor countries and the subsequent policy choices of an international agency is used to develop hypotheses about the behavior of ideal and problematic international agenc...

equally sized and equally influential. This idea seems to be based on the intuition that the production and distribution of public services by local governments have properties similar to those of competitive firms. At a competitive Tiebout equilibrium, each government at a given level of governance in a federal system tends to be that which provid...

The chapter by Ellen Immergut provides a very nice survey of the methodological issues faced by historians who search for the proper lens through which to understand historical events and by other social scientists who use history as data to test the limits of alternative theories from social science. Toward the end of the essay, she poses a method...

"Leaving aside the problem of the correctness of my answers, the fact remains that I have been unable to find any indications that scientists have asked the questions to which I address myself. The unwary might take this as proof that the problems are unimportant, but scientists, fully conscious of the importance of asking new questions, will not m...

Treaty organizations, like other clubs, attempt to solve problems that can more effectively be addressed collectively than independently. In order to address these problems, a club's leadership may be granted coercive power of various kinds. In ordinary clubs, coercive power is simply the right to exclude those who fail to pay their dues for club s...

Economic development is widely believed to stimulate the development of democratic institutions. This paper supports that argument, but suggests that the connection between industrialization and democracy is quite indirect.