The Online Library of Liberty

A project of Liberty Fund, Inc.

• 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

I.

Introduction

As we suggested earlier, the failure of the contractarian-constitutionalist argument to gain adherents in the broad community of scholarship in social science and social philosophy does not stem primarily from disagreement at the level of scientific analysis. Nor does it arise from basic ideological discord, in the proper meaning of this term, although the rhetoric of nonjoined debate often employs ideological charges to mask the absence of understanding. The problem is one of communication and understanding, at least in important part, rather than one of divergence in fundamental ethical norms. The anticonstitutionalist does not know what we are talking about, quite literally, because he approaches the subject matter of social interaction from an alternative vision.

In Chapter 2, we tried to define and describe the contractarian vision or paradigm. But such a definition-description is not enough. We must also try to understand, as best we can, the opposing vision, the mind-set of the anticonstitutionalist, the foundations on which the same actual and potential world of social interaction is conceptualized. In the Nietzschean metaphor, we must try to look at the world through the other window in order to understand what it is that makes our own contractarian interpretation be so stubbornly rejected by so many of our peers. And we must do so as sympathetically as possible, forswearing the introduction of easy charges of analytic error or subversive intent.

We do not know much about the relationship between the accumulation of empirical evidence, broadly defined, and shifts in paradigms. We know that for almost all individuals, some such relationship exists, since people do change the way they view the world: Their perspectives shift as they observe more and as they observe indirectly with the aid of science. We also know, however, that people shift their views of the world when they come to understand alternative interpretations of reality based on alternative visions, without the perceived empirical-historical record’s having changed at all.

The difference between the contractarian-constitutionalist, on the one hand, and the anticonstitutionalist, on the other, does not lie in what each actually sees or observes. The difference lies, instead, in the way that each interprets what he observes or in the way that each fits his observations into an integrated structure of meaning. We want, in this chapter, to “explain” how the anticonstitutionalist looks at politics, the term “politics” here being most broadly defined to incorporate all aspects of social interaction. We can then compare and contrast this way of looking, this conceptualization, with that presented in Chapter 2. Since we are not ourselves proponents of the paradigm we seek to explain, our explanation must be treated as hypothesis rather than as an articulated statement comparable to that of Chapter 2.

We commence, in Section II, by plunging directly into the murky discourse circumvented only temporarily in Chapter 2 and promoted by the question of what individuals seek in politics. We must examine the meaning of “public good,” as compared with “private good,” which involves further discussion of the sources of value. Section III continues the discussion with a comparison between politics and science, both modeled as inherently social activities. Section IV is an attempt to demonstrate that the “truth judgment” paradigm leads almost inexorably to the myth of government benevolence. Section V explores the conceptualization of majoritarian democracy within this myth. Section VI then compares and contrasts the paradigm with our own in a more general philosophical setting.