The calculus of consent at fifty: insights for liberalism.

AuthorBerggren, Niclas
Position'The Calculus of Consent: Logical Foundations of Constitutional Democracy' - Critical essay

The Calculus of Consent: Logical Foundations of Constitutional Democracy, published by James Buchanan and Gordon Tullock in 1962, has become a modern classic as a founding work for the research fields of public-choice and constitutional economics. Its novel analytical approach to politics, in essence making creative use of the tools of economics for this purpose, certainly made a scientific contribution--which is why the book was cited prominently by the Prize Committee when Buchanan was awarded the Nobel Prize.

However, its significance goes beyond strictly scientific contributions. It is of great relevance for liberalism in at least four areas: constitutionalism, generality, robust political economy, and Paretian constructivism. (1)

What do I mean by the term liberalism? One starting point is Gerald Gaus and Shane Courtland's "fundamental liberal principle": "[F]reedom is normatively basic, and so the onus of justification is on those who would limit freedom, especially through coercive means" (2011). That is to say, all kinds of liberalism value freedom highly and at least see it as the most important value prima facie. One way for this paper to be relevant to liberals is to say that most of the issues presented here in one way or other relate to freedom. However, because the concept of freedom itself is multifaceted, I also think it worthwhile to consider what John Gray regards as features of all types of liberalism:

Common to all variants of the liberal tradition is a definite conception, distinctively modern in character, of man and society. What are the elements of this conception? It is individualist, in that it asserts the moral primacy of the person against the claims of any social collectivity: egalitarian, inasmuch as it confers on all men the same moral status and denies the relevance to legal or political order of differences in moral worth among human beings; universalist, affirming the moral unity of the human species and according a secondary importance to specific historic associations and cultural forms; and meliorist in its affirmation of the corrigibility and improvability of all social institutions and political arrangements. It is this conception of man and society which gives liberalism a definite identity which transcends its vast internal variety and complexity. (1995, xii) It will become clear in the following section how the Calculus enterprise, broadly conceived, fits nicely into this characterization of liberalism.

How can a work in social science be of relevance to a political ideology? Social science tends to work with hypothetical imperatives, or with means-end analysis. Calculus makes explicit use of certain ends and takes those as given for the ensuing analysis of means. For example, the first sentence of the preface reads: "This is a book about the political organization of a society of free men" (Buchanan and Tullock 1962, v, italics removed and emphasis added). (2) The authors also write: "The acceptance of the right of the individual to do as he desires so long as his action does not infringe on the freedom of other individuals to do likewise must be a characteristic trait in any 'good' society" (303). I take this to imply that freedom is a basic starting point of the analysis: it, properly interpreted, is presumed to be the end that the means (i.e., the ways in which constitutional democracy is set up) are to serve. Buchanan comments on the normative character of Calculus: "Furthermore, and importantly, these two stands of inquiry [the emphasis on the rules within which choices are made and the economists' model of the behavior of political agents] were imbedded in a normative framework that confused and irritated our critics. The book was as much political philosophy as it was either economics or political science, and we did not, then or now, deny or even apologize for its location within the Madisonian vision of the American experience" (1992, 98).

My use of the phrase "properly interpreted" refers to the Calculus construct of first and foremost starting from a situation of freedom at the constitutional level of decision making; it is freedom in and through constitutional contract. As Viktor Vanberg puts it, "[T]his ideal of individual liberty is about individual sovereignty in defining the rules under which a group of persons chooses to live, rules that among free and equal individuals can only be chosen by voluntary agreement" (2011, 9).

In a similar manner, ideologies also tend to feature both ends and means or values and facts, where the former are normative and ascientific but the latter are scientifically based. The main difference is that in a pure work of social science ends are not affirmed in a definitive way, whereas an ideology is defined in terms of the values it affirms. To summarize, social science often incorporates values as postulates for a positive analysis, and ideologies incorporate facts to guide its adherents in deciding what political positions to form given their values. Having a goal is one thing; knowing how to best achieve it is another, no less important.

In an engaging piece on the soul of classical liberalism, Buchanan writes: "Science and self-interest, especially as combined, do indeed lend force to any argument. But a vision of an ideal, over and beyond science and self-interest, is necessary, and those who profess membership in the club of classical liberals have failed singularly in their neglect of this requirement" (2000, 112). Maybe Buchanan is right that liberalism needs a clearer vision. My feeling, however, is not that liberalism lacks normative ideals, but rather that it needs to be strengthened on the scientific side. Without grounding in a vibrant and open research program, any vision will have a hard time withstanding critical scrutiny. Calculus and the research it has inspired can contribute to the vision of liberalism in this regard.

Four Areas of Inspiration for Liberalism

There are four areas in which I think Calculus has the potential to inspire liberalism. One might write extensively on each area, but, eschewing any ambition for systematic completeness, I focus on select aspects that I consider important. I begin by reiterating some main points from Calculus for each area, after which I present what I take that area to imply for liberalism.

Constitutionalism

The most central message of Calculus is that institutions matter for what collective decisions will be taken and that individuals will therefore want a decisive say in how these decisions are designed in order to make sure that they are in accordance with the individuals' preferences to the largest possible extent. (3) The approach is to start from a few basic assumptions--methodological individualism and rationality in particular--and to ask what individuals would do if they were in a stateless society and wished to introduce a state for handling certain collective affairs. They would then want to establish certain rules--which taken together can be called a "constitution"- -through which they can make collective choices and constrain those given power through the state. The aim is to secure net benefits from this move into government land, and to the extent that each individual who participates in the "constitutional calculus" thinks that such benefits are forthcoming, agreement as to the establishment of the rules can be expected.

Calculus specifically makes clear that political decision making takes place on two distinct and separate levels. Buchanan summarizes this analytical approach:

The central contribution of this book [Calculus] was to identify a two-level structure of collective decision-making. We distinguished between "ordinary politics," consisting of decisions made in legislative assemblies, and "constitutional politics," consisting of decisions made about the rules for ordinary politics.... From the perspective of both justice and efficiency, majority rule may safely be allowed to operate in the realm of ordinary politics provided that there is generalized consensus on the constitution, or on the rules that define and limit what can be done through ordinary politics. It is in arriving at this constitutional framework where Wicksell's idea of requiring unanimity--or at least super majorities--may be practically incorporated. (2003, 14-15) If one is concerned about "ordinary politics," it thus seems a serious oversight not to be at least as concerned about "constitutional politics"--not because constitutional politics has a value of its own divorced from the value of political outcomes, but because constitutions affect what kinds of political decisions are made and, thereby, political outcomes. Buchanan goes as far as to argue as follows: "One way of stating the difference between the Wicksellian approach and that which is still orthodoxy in normative economics is to say that the constitution of policy rather than policy itself becomes the relevant object for reform. A simple game analogy illustrates the difference here. The Wicksellian approach concentrates on reform in the rules, which may be in the potential interest of all players, as opposed to improvement in strategies of play for particular players within defined or existing rules" (1987a, 247).

In Calculus (chap. 7), to exemplify what kind of rules people would agree to, Buchanan and Tullock discuss primarily the basic rule for making collective decisions. The initial premise, thus, is that legitimacy in establishing political institutions derives from (symbolic or conceptual) unanimous consent. (4) However, the outcome of such a basic unanimous decision will not be one in which the decision-making rule for everyday politics requires everyone to agree all of the time. Rather, net benefits will be maximized where the sum of two expected costs are minimized: external costs (the costs associated with having a decision taken that one dislikes) and decision- making costs (the...

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