Part of: The Collected Works of James M. Buchanan in 20 vols. The Collected Works of James M. Buchanan, Vol. 10 (The Reason of Rules)

Jasay vehemently disagrees with Buchanan’s flavor of contractarianism, a fundamental principle of Bucnahan’s that appears heavily in The Reason of Rules. In Social Contract, Jasay presents how coercion is ever present with a state established social contract, and that contractarianism allows for…

Regime Change voices Deneen’s aim to throw out an individualistic and bottom-up approach to establishing rules, and replace it with a populist and illiberal elite class whose interests line up with those of the people.

Buchanan’s Limits expands the discussion on how rules work, the optimal procedures for implementing them, and the necessity of social rules in a world of interdependence.

Barnett examines the problems of modern human interaction and applies Buchanan’s methodology of political economy outlined in The Reason of Rules to advocate for a libertarian legal and political structure.

Rousseau examines fundamental questions of government size and consent of the governed, a precursor work to Buchanan and Brennan’s highlighting of the necessity of a near-unanimous social contract in The Reason of Rules.

Where Buchanan & Brennan explore the optimal framework for establishing rules, Mesquita and Roberts study how those charged with creating the rules hold on to power.

Beards’s early work in constitutional economics examines the economic motivations behind the foundational rules of the United States.

Seidman and Roberts go over how constitutionality is a poor methodology for implementing and evaluating institutional rules, answering Buchanan and Brennan’s call to thinkers in social science to examine the organization of social rules.

Lemieux’s review of The Reason of Rules scrutinizes key topics in the work, such as the efficacy of constitutional rules, contractarianism and justice, and “constitutional revolution.”