Virginia, Rochester, and Bloomington: Twenty-five years of public choice and political science

Abstract

Although the birth of public choice is frequently identified with the publication of Black's 1948 article on the rationale of group decision-making and Arrow's better-known book of 1951, public choice acquired an identity only with the publication of Downs' An Economic Theory of Democracy (1957) and assurance of continued existence with the printing of Buchanan and Tullock's The Calculus of Consent (1962), and Riker's Theory of Political Coalitions (1962) but a few months later. Black's article might have remained but a little-known curiosity and Arrow's book a technical contribution to welfare economics rather than positive political theory if Buchanan and Tullock and Riker had not solidified the great contribution of Downs. It should also be noted that the Thomas Jefferson Center for Studies in Political Economy at the University of Virginia was founded in 1957 the year in which Downs' book was published. In 1966, Tullock began publication of Papers in Non-Market Decision-Making a journal destined to become better-known when in 1968, it was renamed Public Choice.' Founded but a year later at Virginia Polytechnic Institute, the Center for the Study of Public Choice functioned in Blacksburg, Virginia until 1983 when it moved to its current location at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia. Like all intellectual developments public choice has developed a life of its own, given birth to a new generation of theorists, research institutions, approaches and methods, etc., that the 'founding fathers' neither envisaged nor, one suspects, always approve; in any case, like parents they may well wonder how the 'kids' could have turned out as they have. Aside from the family analogy, it seems that three schools of thought have appeared and that they are sufficiently different to warrant distinctive labels. Mine are taken from their geographical locations: Virginia (Charlottesville; Blacksburg; Fairfax), Rochester, and Bloomington. At each of these institutions one or two dominant figures led and continue to lead in the effort to construct theories of collective choice; Riker at Rochester, Buchanan and Tullock at various Virginia universities, and, the Ostroms at Indiana. These highly innovative analysts have also left