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

II.

Society with a History

Let us now consider the position of an individual who, at t₀, is one among many members of a given society, a community, that has its own history, as a political-collective entity, quite apart from the various collected histories of its individual members. That is to say, the collectivity, as an organized polity, has “acted” over a sequence of past periods. It has gone to war or it has maintained peace; it has imposed onerous taxes on its citizens or it has not; it has allowed citizens to enjoy liberty over wide ranges of possible action or it has not. The “it” that has “acted” to create such a history must, of course, have assumed the form of specific persons who have assumed, captured, or been placed in roles of agents. But these persons as agents will have acted in the name of the collective unit rather than explicitly as identifiable individuals.

The history of the collective unit, described by “choices” taken in all past periods, will constrain the set of available choice options in t₀, those that may be confronted both by the collectivity as such and by the individuals within that collectivity, in a manner fully analogous to the interdependencies discussed in the earlier analysis of private choice. The historically determined constraints may be descriptively summarized in the laws, institutions, customs, and traditions of the community, including the rules or institutions that define the means of making collective “choices.” Again, as in the earlier analysis, the “choices” made by the collective unit as such in t₀ will modify the options that will emerge in t₁ and beyond, through influences on the constraints or preferences or both.

Our concern in Part 2 is with the choice behavior of the person who participates in some group decision process as one member (one voter) among many and who expects that his expressed preferences (“choices”) will be counted and amalgamated with those of others through the operation of a known rule (for example, majority or plurality voting) that will generate a single decisive collective outcome that once reached, will be effective for all members, that is, will be “public” in the formal, analytic sense of this term.