Perspectives on Positive Political Economy.

• Author: Munger, Michael C.

Edited by James Alt and Kenneth Shepsle. New York: Cambridge University Press (Cambridge Series in the Political Economy of Institutions), 1990. Pp. x, 268. $49.50 hardcover, $16.95 paper.

"Oh, call it by some better name. . . " Thomas Moore, in Ballads and Songs, st. 1. The first question to ask is, why can't these people pick a name and stick with it? Nonmarket decision making, public choice, political economy, neoinstitutionalist economics, and now "Positive Political Economy?" There seems to be developing, in academics as in civil culture, a trend toward new names with a half life of about two weeks. One hopes that "PPE", unlike its nomina dubia ancestors, lasts at least long enough that someone other than practitioners have heard it before it is changed again.

If this book is any indication, it will last much longer. Unlike most edited volumes, this works as a collection. There are no clinkers, no weak contributors and no weak contributions. The essays are divided into three sections: "The New Political Economy," Organizations, Transactions, and Opportunities," and "Reflections on Theoretical Foundations." The last section comprises four essays, by Douglass North, Mancur Olson, William Riker, and Gordon Tullock. These are not simply "great man" papers; rather, each is a serious attempt to make sense of where PPE now stands from an intimate knowledge of where it was born.

Most of the essays will be of more use to political scientists than to economists (with exceptions to be noted below). The first piece, by Peter Ordeshook, ought to be of use to everyone. Aptly tittle "The Emerging Discipline of Political Economy," Ordeshook challenges the conventional distinctions of the academy:

That political and economic processes cannot be separated

seems evident . . . From this view, it is

surprising to find economics and politics divided into distinct

disciplines, with their jointly study impeded

by bureaucratic divisions at universities, by the specialization

of scholarly journals, and by the prevalent

use of modes of inquiry in political science that are seemingly

at odds with those used in economics . . .

Nevertheless, an emerging intellectual synergism promises to

blur boundaries altogether [p. 9].

Ordeshook's thesis is provocative, and his support for it persuasive. Properly done, PPE is distinct from both political science and economics, not so much because those disciplines are unable to address the questions of interest, but because they...