Public choice versus constitutional economics: A methodological interpretation of the Buchanan research program

Abstract

Through conceptual redirections, the Buchanan research program attempts to react to the fact that economic policy advice is often ignored. In terms of positive analyses, the research perspective is focused on institutions, i.e., the rules of economic as well as political games. In terms of normative analyses, the democratic criterion of unanimous consent is substituted for the normative efficiency criterion employed by welfare economics. The underlying idea is to direct positive analyses toward developing informative explanations on which normative analyses can build in order to provide intellectual orientation and thereby to contribute to democratic self-enlightenment. However, large parts of the existing public choice literature can be regarded as empirically oriented welfare-economic analyses of the political sector. Consequently, they run the danger of duplicating the failure of economic policy advice. This is why, during the 80s James Buchanan has changed the name of his research program from ‘public choice’ to ‘constitutional economics.’