Original scientific paper
BUCHANAN’S CONCEPT OF POLITICAL ECONOMY: FROM ECONOMIES AS EXCHANGE TO CONSTITUTIONAL POLITICAL ECONOMY
Tonči Kursar
; Faculty of Political Science, University of Zagreb, Zagreb, Croatia
Abstract
The author looks into Buchanan’s contribution to the contemporary political economy. His starting point is that Buchanan’s concept of economy as exchange links political science and economics, showing that this is feasible, since Buchanan has rejected the theory of allocation, a standard in economics, and promoted the market theory based on exchange. The theory of allocation is dubious for Buchanan since it reduces the subject of economics to a set of problems and not to a characteristic form of human activity. That is why he uses the concept of simbiotics, meaning the attitude based on the study of links among various actors that are beneficial for all. Buchanan’s basic concept evolved and was shaped in the 1980s in the form of the constitutional political economy. Constitutional political economy is an attempt to explain the possibilities of different legalconstitutional rules that determine the basic framework for selecting the economic and political actors. The author claims that for political science particularly important is the fact that Buchanan defines this type of political economy as a redux of the political in economics. In this way on the one hand it became questionable in economics as a discipline, and on the other more acceptable for political science. However, the fact that Buchanan’s work transcends the rigid boundaries of social disciplines does not mean that he unreservedly paves the way for political science. On the contrary, Buchanan is pursuing such a fundamental revision of the rigid boundaries among disciplines in social sciences that it may challenge the present status of political science.
Keywords
economy; economy as exchange; public choice; constitutional political economy; political science
Hrčak ID:
24298
URI
Publication date:
13.8.2002.
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