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• Foreword
• Preface
• The Reason of Rules
• 1.: The Constitutional Imperative
• I.: Introduction
• II.: Reasons For Rules
• III.: Rules of Games
• IV.: Rules of the Road
• V.: Rules of the Market Order
• VI.: Rules of Political Order
• VII.: The Importance of Rules
• 2.: The Contractarian Vision
• I.: Introduction
• II.: Noncontractarian Constitutionalism
• III.: Individuals As Sources of Value
• IV.: Contract and Exchange
• V.: Politics In the Exchange Perspective
• VI.: Unanimity As the Contractual Ideal
• VII.: Agreement On Rules and the Veils of Ignorance and Uncertainty
• VIII.: Conclusions
• 3.: The Myth of Benevolence *
• I.: Introduction
• II.: Private Good and Public Good
• III.: Science, Truth, and Politics
• IV.: The Authoritarian Imperative
• V.: Majoritarian Democracy In the Noncontractarian Paradigm
• VI.: The Aim of Politics
• 4.: Modeling the Individual For Constitutional Analysis
• I.: Introduction
• II.: Homo Economicus In Politics: the Argument For Symmetry
• III.: Science and the Empiricist Defense
• IV.: A Methodological Defense of the Differential Interest Model of Behavior
• V.: Social Evaluation and Quasi-risk Aversion
• VI.: Gresham’s Law In Politics
• VII.: Summary
• 5.: Time, Temptation, and the Constrained Future *
• Preface
• Part 1.: Individual Private Choice
• I.: Introduction
• II.: The Ultimate Z ’s
• III.: Preferences For Preferences
• IV.: Past, Present, and Future
• Part 2.: Individual Public Choice
• I.: Introduction
• II.: Society With a History
• III.: Temporal Interdependence
• IV.: An Illustration
• V.: Moral Rules And/or Constitutional Commitment
• 6.: Politics Without Rules, I: Time and Nonconstrained Collective Action
• I.: Introduction
• II.: The Social Discount Rate
• III.: The High-tax Trap
• IV.: The Inflation Trap
• V.: The Public-debt Trap
• VI.: Other Examples
• VII.: Conclusions
• 7.: Rules and Justice
• I.: Introduction
• II.: Just Conduct and the Notion of Desert
• III.: Justice and Promise Keeping
• IV.: Justice Among Rules
• V.: Just Rules, Agreed-on Rules, and Just Conduct
• VI.: Conclusions
• 8.: Politics Without Rules, II: Distributive Justice and Distributive Politics
• I.: Introduction
• II.: Distributive Justice: the Conventional View
• III.: The Constitutional Perspective and Institutional Incidence
• IV.: The Incidence of Unrestricted Majoritarianism
• V.: Tax Rules and Distribution Under Majority Rule
• VI.: Direct Constitutionalism and Distributive Justice
• VII.: Summary
• 9.: Is Constitutional Revolution Possible In Democracy?
• I.: Introduction
• II.: Pareto-superior Change and Wicksellian Unanimity
• III.: Distributional Limits and Prospective Rules
• IV.: Status Quo Entitlements and Distributional Envy
• V.: Constitutional Change and Free Riders
• VI.: The Role of Norms
• VII.: Toward a Civic Religion

James M. Buchanan and Geoffrey Brennan,

Spitzingsee, Bavaria, May 1998

Foreword

The Reason of Rules, by Geoffrey Brennan and James M. Buchanan, is a book-length attempt to focus the energies of economists and other social analysts on the nature and function of the rules under which ordinary political life and market life function.1 The argument is that modern economics seems mired in either explaining the obvious or overmathematizing the trivial. The message of this book is that such efforts are misguided and that analysts’ time would be much better spent on the problem of how rules can be devised and improved upon so that the ordinary life of an economy can proceed with a minimum of social dilemma ingredients. In other words, there is more than one way to get out of the jungle; can we develop any positive and normative theories of what the “best” way might be?

Harkening back to classical economics, Brennan and Buchanan stress that this consideration of rules is not really a new problem for economic analysis, and they point out that applying the analytical rigor of modern economics to rules and their selection is not an entirely new intellectual enterprise. The foundation stones have barely, if at all, been laid in this work, and this book is as good a source as any in all of Buchanan’s work for capturing the essence of his vision of constitutional political economy.

There are, of course, other sources of this approach contained in various papers and books in this collection of Buchanan’s works. The basic idea of the importance of rules dates to at least The Calculus of Consent and threads its way through Buchanan’s work to this very day.2 More than anything else, Buchanan’s basic insight that rules are important can be said to have driven most of his written work over his career. More than any other single scholar, he is responsible for this emphasis and its emergence in modern economics and political science.

The Reason of Rules reflects an attempt to erect some methodological and analytical substance around this basic idea of rules. Perhaps it reflects a turning point in economics in that this book foreshadows the work of future constitutional theorists. It is hard to be sure about this because the problem that Buchanan assigns himself is so hard. However, the inherent difficulty of the problem reflects the stature of Buchanan the man and scholar. Better to build a base camp so that others can ultimately scale the highest mountain than to climb a nearby hill.

Robert D. Tollison

• University of Mississippi

1998

Geoffrey Brennan

As we noted in the preface, The Reason of Rules is a response to critics of The Power to Tax, also jointly authored with Geoffrey Brennan. In an analytical sense, Brennan and I were essentially clones of each other in the whole enterprise. We shared the same reactions to the criticisms of those who seemed simply to misunderstand our whole purpose in the earlier book.

We had planned to write a third book, which we were to call The Power to Transfer. This book has not been, and will not be, written. The basic analysis proved to be much more difficult than we had anticipated, and, also, Geoffrey Brennan returned to Australian National University in 1983.

Geoffrey Brennan probably knows how I think better than any other coauthor. For me, it is good that he serves as coeditor of the Collected Works.

James M. Buchanan

• Fairfax, Virginia

1998

[1. ]Geoffrey Brennan and James M. Buchanan, The Reason of Rules: Constitutional Political Economy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), volume 10 in the series.

[2. ]James M. Buchanan and Gordon Tullock, The Calculus of Consent: Logical Foundations of Constitutional Democracy (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1962), volume 3 in the series.