Exploring the Political Economy and Social Philosophy of James M. Buchanan
252
Exploring the Political Economy and Social Philosophy of James M. Buchanan
252Paperback
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Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781786605610 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc. |
| Publication date: | 05/22/2018 |
| Series: | Economy, Polity, and Society |
| Pages: | 252 |
| Product dimensions: | 5.91(w) x 8.75(h) x 0.75(d) |
| Age Range: | 18 Years |
About the Author
Advanced Study in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics at the Mercatus Center at George Mason
University. Christopher J. Coyne is the F. A. Harper Professor of Economics at George Mason University and the Associate Director of the F. A. Hayek Program for Advanced Study in Philosophy, Politics, and
Economics at the Mercatus Center. Stefanie Haeffele is the Deputy Director of Academic and Student Programs and a senior fellow for the F. A. Hayek Program for Advanced Study in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics at the
Mercatus Center at George Mason University.
Read an Excerpt
CHAPTER 1
Rawls, Buchanan, and the Search for a Better Social Contract
Brian Kogelmann
Because he was such an accomplished economist, it can easily be forgotten that James M. Buchanan was something of a great philosopher as well. In his important essay on the social contract tradition, Samuel Freeman places Buchanan in the company of contemporaries such as John Rawls, David Gauthier, and Thomas Scanlon, as well as giants from the history of thought such as Hobbes and Rousseau (1990 [2007], 17). This is largely due to Buchanan's The Limits of Liberty (1975 [2000]), though Buchanan's foray into the social contract tradition really began in his coauthored masterpiece with Gordon Tullock, The Calculus of Consent (1959 [1999]). Though many interpret this work strictly as a piece of positive social science, Buchanan always maintained that The Calculus of Consent was primarily a normative project, part of the broader social contract tradition (Thrasher and Gaus, 2017).
Though often included among the greats, Buchanan's contributions to social contract theory are often either hastily dismissed or deeply misunderstood. The purpose of this chapter is to show that such dismissals and misunderstandings are to the detriment of the social contract tradition as a whole. More precisely, many of the shortcomings found in contemporary approaches to the social contract — particularly the approach pursued by Rawls and his followers — can be remedied by adopting specific features of Buchanan's model. This does not mean that Buchanan's approach to the social contract is without flaw itself. As we shall see, Buchanan's model has its own unique problems. But in patching these holes while keeping those elements that circumnavigate the problems associated with other theories, we end with a vastly superior model that better achieves the philosophical goals of the social contract enterprise. We end up with a new and improved social contract.
The structure of this chapter is as follows. The first section examines Buchanan's forays into the social contract tradition, both highlighting a tension in Buchanan's thought as well as pinning down the interpretation of Buchanan to be used throughout this chapter. The second section examines the goals of the social contract tradition, introducing two success conditions any plausible social contract theory must satisfy. Section three turns to Rawls's famous contribution to the social contract, arguing that it fails to satisfy one of the two desiderata introduced in the prior section. Section four examines one version of Buchanan's theory of the social contract, arguing that it succeeds across the desideratum Rawls's theory failed across, yet fails across the desideratum Rawls's theory succeeds across. Section five pursues a synthesis of Rawls and Buchanan, showing how the strengths of the two theories can be combined to produce a better theory of the social contract that succeeds where the prior two theories failed. There is a concluding section.
BUCHANAN'S FORAYS INTO THE SOCIAL CONTRACT TRADITION
Buchanan's forays into the social contract tradition spanned the course of his career and are, at times, inconsistent. In focusing on Buchanan's theory of the social contract we must thus clearly specify which Buchanan's theory of the social contract we are talking about. As a philosophical project, the social contract is, at its core, a normative enterprise: it seeks to give us leverage to critique our current practices while also highlighting arrangements we can justifiably move toward if our current practices are in disrepute. But in being a social scientist, it is not obvious Buchanan is engaged in such normative theorizing. Indeed, this is something Buchanan himself struggled with, and is, I think, a point of tension between Buchanan's and Tullock's understandings of their shared work.
In the opening pages of the The Calculus of Consent, Buchanan and Tullock write,
Political theory has concerned itself with the question: What is the State? Political philosophy has extended this to: What ought the State be? Political "science" has asked: How is the State organized?
None of these questions will be answered here. We are not directly interested in what the State or a State actually is, but propose to define quite specifically, yet quite briefly, what we think a State ought to be. (Buchanan and Tullock [1962] 2004, 3; emphasis original)
Now detailing what they think the state ought to be certainly seems like a normative project, but it is not clear that Buchanan and Tullock agree on this point. In their separately written appendices to The Calculus of Consent, Buchanan and Tullock each describe how their jointly authored contribution fits within broader schools of scholarly enquiry. Tullock primarily sees theoretical forerunners to their project in the then-developing game theory and social choice literature, citing the work of John von Neumann and Oscar Morgenstern, Duncan Black, and Kenneth Arrow (Buchanan and Tullock [1962] 2004, 310–31). On this understanding, The Calculus of Consent is decidedly a work of positive social science, not a contribution to normative social contract theory.
Buchanan's appendix, however, places the piece squarely in the social contract tradition and explicitly as a normative project. Buchanan begins by noting that the science of politics contains both a positive as well as a normative component:
A positive science of politics should analyze the operation of an existing, or postulated, set of rules for collective decision-making quite independent of the efficacy of this set in furthering or in promoting certain "social goals." A normative theory of politics should, by contrast, array the alternative sets of rules in accordance with their predicted efficiency in producing certain ends or goals which should be, if possible, made quite explicit. (Buchanan and Tullock [1962] 2004, 292)
Importantly, Buchanan defines the core question of The Calculus of Consent as lying within the normative side of the science of politics: "What set of rules should the fully rational individual, motivated primarily by his own self-interest, seek to achieve if he recognizes that the approval of such rules must embody mutual agreement among his fellows?" (Buchanan and Tullock [1962] 2004, 296; emphasis original). This normative understanding of The Calculus of Consent is made even more prominent when Buchanan argues that the social contract is definitely not an empirical or descriptive project:
The relevance of the contract theory must lie, however, not in explanation of the origins of government, but in its potential aid in perfecting existing institutions of government ... The origins of civil government and the major influences in its development may be almost wholly nonrational ... if the purpose of investigation is solely that of explaining such growth, there is perhaps little purpose in inventing anything like the contractual apparatus. (Buchanan and Tullock [1962] 2004, 304)
This normative understanding of The Calculus of Consent, as well as the social contract tradition more generally, is later completely disavowed in Buchanan's The Limits of Liberty (1975 [2000]), published roughly ten years later. Here Buchanan argues — contra his earlier remarks — that "the origins of the state can be derived from an individualistic calculus ... as we know from the writings of Thomas Hobbes as well as earlier contractarians" (Buchanan [1975] 2000, 9). In reflecting on The Calculus of Consent, Buchanan notes that "the framework for analysis was necessarily contractarian, in that we tried to explain the emergence of observed institutions" (Buchanan [1975] 2000, 10; emphasis added). And in his description of the project pursued in The Limits of Liberty, Buchanan says, "In this book ... existing and potential institutions as well as behavior within certain institutional constraints are explained in terms of failures of potentially viable contractual agreements to be made or, if made, to be respected and/or enforced" (Buchanan [1975] 2000, 11; emphasis added). As suggested in the introduction, much of the attention Buchanan receives as a social contract theorist in the philosophical literature comes from his work in The Limits of Liberty, not from his joint work in The Calculus of Consent (e.g., Gauthier 1986, ch. 7; Freeman [1990] 2007).
Even these remarks would not be Buchanan's final thoughts on the The Calculus of Consent or the broader social contract tradition. In a piece written in the 1980s, Buchanan shifts back to a more normative understanding of this work: "The Calculus differed from the precursory works in one fundamental respect, namely, it embodied a justificatory argument" (Buchanan [1987] 2001, 70; emphasis original). So Buchanan's understanding of social contract theory and his contributions to it as an essentially normative enterprise are not only in dispute, but in dispute within Buchanan's own understanding of himself. This chapter interprets Buchanan's contributions to social contract theory as primarily a normative project, working on those questions social contract theorists are traditionally understood to be working on. Not only this, but this chapter takes Buchanan's contributions in The Calculus of Consent as its core focus, contra most of the philosophical literature that primarily addresses The Limits of Liberty.
THE GOALS OF SOCIAL CONTRACT THEORY
As we navigate the social world we are confronted with rules and institutions that place restrictions on what we may do. Intuitively, some of these restrictions seem justified: though they may prevent us from doing certain things we would like to do at a particular point in time, they, overall, help us live better together. Also intuitively, some of these restrictions on what we may do are not justified: they are pernicious and harmful, making some worse off strictly for the benefit of others. As beings who can think about and act for moral reasons, it is natural for us to ask which rules and institutions are justified and which rules and institutions are not justified.
Social contract theory is but one way of addressing these difficult questions. Very roughly, rules and institutions are justified when they would be the object of a hypothetical agreement of suitably modeled agents in a suitably modeled choice situation. Note that right from the get-go we stipulate that social contract theory is not concerned with actual consent by actual persons — what Gerald Gaus calls "justificatory populism" (Gaus 1996, 130–31). Rather, social contract theory — to borrow Rawls's phrasing — is a philosophical tool we use that allows persons to ask "whether any of them has a legitimate complaint against their established institutions" (Rawls [1958] 1999, 53). If our current rules and institutions are the object of a suitably modeled agreement, then we have no legitimate complaint against them. If our current rules and institutions are not the object of a suitably modeled agreement, then there is something wrong with our current institutional order — we can justly complain about the restrictions placed on us, and now have some moral basis for demanding they change. In this way, social contract theory "tests" our current practices: if our practices are selected by contractors, then they are justified to us. If not, then not (Gaus 2011, 424–25).
Now in constructing a hypothetical agreement the question of how to precisely model the choice situation arises. To be sure, there are many ways of modeling the relevant parties, their preferences and information sets (i.e., beliefs), as well as the menu options they confront and much more. Furthermore, it is unlikely that there is one and only one best or correct way of fleshing out this model — there are many reasonable models of the initial choice problem, and thus many plausible social contracts we can use to appraise our current institutional order (Thrasher 2014). Yet, still, there are some constraints any suitable contract theory will place on the hypothetical choice situation. Such constraints follow from the very nature of the project we are engaged in — they are required so we do not, in David Schmidtz's words, "set aside the problem" we are theorizing (2011, 777).
Since we are using social contract theory to gain some leverage on the reasons you and I have to endorse or reject our current set of institutions, it follows that the agreement between the parties in our hypothetical contract must, in some sense, actually speak to you and I. That is, it must be rational for actual persons in actual society to follow through and comply with whatever rules or institutions are ultimately selected. In his important work on the foundations of social contract theory, Gauthier notes that "the impartial perspective of the ideal actor must cohere with the perspectives of rational individuals actually engaged in strategic choice" (1986, 235). In their work on modeling hypothetical agreements, Gaus and John Thrasher call this the identity test, for actual persons in society must be able to identify with whatever our hypothetical parties choose, in that it is rational for you and I to follow through on whatever the output of the theory is (2015, 41). As an example, a contract situation that yielded the moral requirement that we all give to the point that we are paupers fails the identity test — it is hard to see how people like us could see such a requirement as rational from our actual, non-normalized perspectives.
But when we ask whether our current institutional order is justified, and thus whether we have reason to continue supporting it, we are not asking whether we have any old kind of reason to do so — rather, we want to know whether we have moral reason to continue supporting it. Of course, the slave-holder certainly had some kind of reason to continue supporting the current institutional order in pre–Civil War America; yet, if such a set of rules were the object of agreement in our hypothetical choice situation then something has clearly gone wrong. Returning to Gauthier's work on the foundations of the social contract, he notes that contracts made in our hypothetical choice situations must be done from the Archimedean point of view, where any contractor's "concern is necessarily impartial, because it is based on the formal features of individual rational agency without the biasing content of a particular and determinant set of individual characteristics" (Gauthier 1986, 233). Gaus and Thrasher call this the recognition test, for you and I examining the agreement of our hypothetical parties must be able to actually recognize whatever is chosen as a bona fide moral proposal (Gaus and Thrasher 2015, 41). Note, insisting that the choice of our hypothetical parties be an impartial one does not commit us to there being one and only one impartial perspective. As Amartya Sen notes in his recent contribution to the social contract tradition, there may be many different and, indeed, incompatible impartial perspectives (Sen 2009, IX, 194–207). The recognition test merely requires our contractors be modeled using one such viewpoint.
Again, both the identity and recognition tests seem to intuitively follow from what it would mean to successfully complete the project: the recognition test follows from the fact that we seek moral reasons for why you and I have to comply with our current practices; and the identity test follows from the fact that we seek moral reasons for why you and I have to comply with our current practices. Yet balancing these tests is no easy task. Indeed, it is not obvious it can actually be done. As an example, though many may grant that Gauthier satisfied the recognition test with his theory of the social contract (although see Southwood 2010, ch. 2 on this point), the manner in which Gauthier tries to show his contract passes the identity test is deemed a failure by most. To show that it is rational to comply with his derived moral principle, Gauthier ends up changing the definition of rationality to a nonmodular conception at first (Gauthier 1986, ch. 6) and then finally to a conception that denies rational agents should behave strategically — they should simply choose what is Pareto optimal regardless what other players do (Gauthier 2013, 606–7). Note, this latter revision requires one to cooperate in prisoner's dilemmas. Revising the definition of rationality in such a manner in order to satisfy the identity test is a controversial move to say the least.
It is a fundamental conviction of the current project that no existing theory of the social contract satisfies both the identity and recognition tests. In repurposing Buchanan's contributions to the social contract, the goal is to develop a model of the social contract that satisfies both the identity test and the recognition test: we seek to model a contractual arrangement determining specific rules to live by that would be rational for us to follow but also strike us as bona fide moral proposals. If we succeed in doing this then not only do we offer a novel and more philosophically sophisticated take on Buchanan's social contract theory, but we also succeed where all others have failed.
(Continues…)
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