The Limits of Public Choice: A Sociological Critique of the Economic Theory of Politics.

• Author: Schap, David

By Lars Udehn New York: Routledge, 1996. Pp. xi, 447. $89.95 cloth, $25 paper.

The time is right for a book exploring the limits of public choice. The field has grown enormously in personnel, domain, and influence. From humble origins as a small scholarly discussion group in Virginia, the Public Choice Society has expanded to include hundreds of researchers in North America, and counterpart societies have emerged in Europe and Japan. Those familiar with the range of topics researched under the inclusive rubric of public choice know full well that economic imperialism has been hard at work. And none can doubt that the entire field gained professional stature with the awarding of the Nobel Prize in Economic Science to James M. Buchanan a decade ago. Having fully ripened, the field now calls out for a thoughtful pause to consider the limits of its domain. In the movie Magnum Force, "Dirty Harry" Callahan warns: "A man's got to know his limitations." So, too, do researchers in public choice.

Although the time is right for a book exploring the limits of public choice, practitioners may find that Lars Udehn's is not the right book for them. As its subtitle suggests, it is written from a decidedly sociological viewpoint, the author being a sociologist affiliated with the University of Uppsala. Critics of public choice looking for an erudite discussion of the limitations of economic methodological orthodoxy argued from a sociological perspective that scorns economic imperialism will no doubt find this book much to their liking. Public choice disciples seeking honestly to consider the limits of economics generally and public choice specifically will probably find this work thought provoking and somewhat unsettling. Ultimately, as a practicing economist, I was left longing for a book that explores the limits of public choice from the inside--that is, one fashioned by a fellow economist. More on this point later.

Udehn begins by calling attention to traditional political science as a field devoted primarily to description and much in need of theoretical guidance: "a discipline with a topic, but no particular approach" (p. 1). Clearly, for Udehn, economics plays a crucial role in illuminating some political phenomena, but so do the sister disciplines of psychology and sociology:

My quarrel is with those who make exaggerated claims concerning the

universality and explanatory power of economic theory. The argument of

this book is not that public choice...