Individuals and Interest Groups in the Political Process
A Public Choice Approach
Summary
cooperation. An interdisciplinary approach to public choice, as well as elements of constitutional economy, political philosophy, and ethics are brought together to question our understanding of the way individuals and interest groups
operate in the political sphere due to serious inconsistencies of individual reasoning within the latter.
Excerpt
Table Of Contents
- Cover
- Titel
- Copyright
- Autorenangaben
- Über das Buch
- Zitierfähigkeit des eBooks
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction
- James M. Buchanan and public choice as a political philosophy
- Methodological individualism and rationality
- The concept of politics
- Chapter 1 Ethics and self-interest in the writings of James M. Buchanan and its philosophical implications for human behavior
- Ethics and the size of the group in the writings of James M. Buchanan
- The free-rider dilemma and ethics
- Conclusions
- Chapter 2 Individual citizens as voters and politicians
- Individuals as citizens, politicians and voters in
- The ethical-economic argument
- Individuals – Constitutional choice
- Not really homo oeconomicus
- Individual rationality in social choice
- Politicians in The Calculus of Consent
- Individuals as citizens, politicians and voters in
- The people and the state – Basic philosophical assumption
- Paradox of being governed
- Protective state and productive state
- Politicians in
- Overstepping constitutional boundaries
- Individuals as citizens, politicians and voters in the
- Politicians in the
- The interventionist bias
- Buchanan and Keynes
- The nature of political competition
- Into the minds of citizens
- Chapter 3 Social contract and the grounds for the emergence of interest groups
- Plato and the idea of political obligation
- Modern approaches to social contract theory
- Thomas Hobbes
- John Locke
- Jean-Jacques Rousseau
- Immanuel Kant
- John Rawls
- David Gauthier
- Conclusions
- Chapter 4 Uncertainty behind social contracts
- Veil of uncertainty
- Uncertainty of voters and politicians
- Constitutional and post-constitutional choices
- The costs of collective action
- Buchanan and Musgrave on the unanimity rule
- Buchanan and his social contract
- Post-constitutional unanimity
- Side payments and bargaining
- Bargaining under less-than-unanimity rules
- Logrolling in public decision-making
- Conclusions
- Chapter 5 Individual calculus of interest group members
- What interest groups are to be discussed
- The line of ideology and economic interest
- The line of uncertainty and motivation
- The line of vague information and operational knowledge
- The model of individual calculus of interest group members
- Conclusions
- Chapter 6 Factoring group interests and private calculus into political processes
- Interest groups in The Calculus of Consent
- Political processes
- Anthony Downs on political parties in the public process
- Implications of the model for the functioning of interest groups and political processes
- A calculus that shapes political processes
- Political irrationality that lurks under the surface
- Conclusions
- Bibliography
- Index
Acknowledgements
There are a number of people that deserve to be mentioned here, to whom I am most grateful, both for their emotional support as well as their direct contribution. I would like to start by thanking my wife, Isabela. It was a very demanding and difficult time in our lives due to work as well as having to take care of our small children and a sick family member. She asked me whether I wished to finish my PhD dissertation or not. I said that I do want to finish it. After that, for the next two years, she took an extraordinary amount of work and responsibilities on herself, while I continued my work. I am both thankful and glad that her efforts did not go to waste. I would also like to mention my father, Antoni, and my uncle, Edward. Both of them have greatly contributed throughout the years and made it possible for me to continue studying and writing. Thanks to them, I was able to accumulate both knowledge and experience, and now I hold several university diplomas in the fields of philosophy, economy, EU policy, philology, and linguistics.
As for the present publication and the doctoral dissertation it is based on, my greatest gratitude and thanks go to Professor Justyna Miklaszewska, who agreed to be my promoter. It is thanks to her expertise and patience that I was able to develop knowledge and eventually submit a thesis that I was able to successfully defend. It is also thanks to her encouragement and support that the final touches were done on time. The final shape of the work that is now being published was also influenced, extended, and improved thanks to both criticism and praise it received from Professor Howard Williams and Professor Adam Chmielewski, who reviewed the initial doctoral dissertation. Their remarks have enabled me to strengthen and extend my argumentation, as well as suggest valuable additions. Once again, I am most grateful for their work and meticulously drawn reviews. A special thanks should also go to Professor Williams and Professor Miklaszewska for encouraging me, even shortly after the defense of my PhD dissertation, that it deserves a separate publication. At that point in time, when a person usually tends to focus more on the aspects that still require work, that was muchneeded and impactful encouragement.
Introduction
In the present work, I would like to address the role an individual plays in a social and political setting, as well as the impact various interest groups (mainly political parties) exert on political processes and decisions made in the public sphere, while building my own model of the relations between individuals in such interest groups. Its goal is to address relations within interest groups, with a particular focus on those who are actively present or aspire to have a say in public decision-making. I wish to do so in the framework of public choice theory and, to a large extent, focus on scholars that represent this branch of political philosophy, with the more extensive presence of one of its most prominent scholars and founders, James M. Buchanan.1 I would also like to recognize the importance of liberal philosophy within the public choice approach, as well as authors dealing with the social contract theory that provides a setting for human political activities and those associated with interest groups.
In Chapter 1, the analysis is going to commence with a reconstruction of the evolution in the thought of James M. Buchanan regarding the role of self-interest and ethics in determining human behavior, both in private matters as well as in the social context. The analysis is going to be based on a selection from the available massive global literature as well as the works of Polish authors, such as D.C. Mueller,2 Jan Narveson,3 Justyna Miklaszewska,4 but also Grzegorz Lissowski or Czesław Porębski, to name a few.
In Chapter 2, by taking a look at some of the relevant works of Buchanan in the order in which they were published, I am going to attempt a reconstruction of his ideas that might be attributed to politicians and voters, as well as his remarks on interest groups and their conduct. This should prove helpful and a reasonable starting point from which arguments about interest groups comprised of individuals, such as politicians and voters, can be drawn. This should also help to satisfy the requirement of keeping in line with the notion of methodological individualism that the author also decided to follow in the present work. Regarding interest groups, I also wish to introduce the thoughts of such relevant scholars as Anthony Downs, Robert A. Dahl, and Mancur Olson, as well as some of the more contemporary ones, such as Bryan Caplan.
Having a chronological perspective on individuals (politicians and voters) in the works of James M. Buchanan, in Chapter 3, some of the more relevant philosophical ideas on the social contract theory will be addressed, which are to further inform our analysis of individuals, their preferences, motivations, and behavior. Chapter 4 will introduce the idea of uncertainty, which is always an element in the private calculus of individuals and also when public choices are considered, as well as several other notions such as the cost of collective action or the notion of bargaining. Having these topics analyzed should provide a necessary background for the introduction of the model depicting the individual calculus of interest group members I wish to propose and explain in Chapter 5. The model constitutes an attempt at describing how selected factors impact the attitudes and motivations of members of an interest group. Its aim is to point out the scope of varying interests that, in practice, set members of the group apart. Also, other secondary concepts are to be introduced, such as the notion of uncertainty or bargaining, when these will appear most relevant and helpful. The analysis will be conducted using the public choice approach, slightly modified in order to better describe my own perspective.
The consideration of politicians and voters, the social contract that sets the scene for group interests to manifest, as well as the model of individual calculus, are to provide some useful insights into the impact individual calculation and behavior produce in the sphere of public decision-making in the context of interest groups. Also, consideration of the evolution in the attitude of James M. Buchanan towards the relevance of self-interest and ethics in the behavior of individuals should lead to conclusions regarding the overarching topic, which is the impact of interest groups on political processes.
I am aware that any of these elements could be in themselves a topic for extensive work, and that is why they will be limited in their scope to serve the concerns listed above. Even though I would like to assume the model also describes some of the dynamics within interest groups that are active in political decisionmaking, I also find it relevant for various other group types that operate on the market and are profit-driven. However, in the present work, and for the sake of clarity and to avoid overextension, the model will be used to focus mostly on the public and political sphere, where individuals function as politicians, voters, and citizens.
Our various considerations are meant to form a background and basis for the philosophical analysis of the private calculus made by individuals who are in a position to impact political processes. Since the private calculus of individuals is a crucial element of our analysis, it appears reasonable to construct it through a more extensive consideration of the works of James M. Buchanan, who, together with Gordon Tullock, coauthored their well-known book entitled The Calculus, of Consent: Logical Foundations of Constitutional Democracy, first published in 1962 . Even though many of its chapters have actually been based on the ideas and articles developed initially by Gordon Tullock, our focus will be on philosophical aspects rather than mathematical models. Already when working on The Calculus of Consent, and increasingly so in his later publications, “Buchanan assumed the role of philosopher while Tullock was the scientist.”5
It feels important and prudent to clarify at this point that my focus in the present work will be interdisciplinary in nature, leaning mostly on such scientific fields as political philosophy, economics, sociology, political science, or even psychology. The model of individual calculation is not going to be set in a formalized or mathematical setting of economics nor based on statistical and real-life examples used in the political sciences.6 It might be supplemented and extended with contributions from these fields in the future.7 That being said, the public choice approach does also make use of notions and tools that are closely connected with other fields, and its connection with the economy does not make it lose its philosophical character. After all, historically, economics was initially a part of philosophical considerations, and even Adam Smith considered himself a philosopher since economics as a separate field of study did not yet emerge in his time.
The model from Chapter 5 will be presented together with its graphical representation to better illustrate both its content and possible implications. It is not going to include any statistical or mathematical reasoning, as its goal is simply to facilitate the understanding of a general take on the philosophical explanation of the private calculus of individuals that belong to certain interest groups that are active in political processes. The focus will be on these members of such interest groups that are close to actual political processes and have the potential to influence them. We are going to consider their position, incentives, motivations, and other related factors that are present in their calculus and draw conclusions. Our general thesis is that they form subgroups of interest groups with interests, but also preferences of their own, that set them apart from other members of the groups they belong to. We also assume that these subgroups have more common interests with other equivalent subgroups than with the remaining members of their respective interest groups. On one hand, the model explains a set of factors that are relevant to group members who are active in the political process, but at the same time makes assumptions regarding their attitude towards other members of the group they are part of, a group they may lead or at least have prominent positions in, which is something we assume due to their involvement in political decision-making.
The model is going to be grounded in a set of considerations that will be elaborated on in other chapters. The available literature on interest groups and related topics such as political processes, social contract theories, etc. is huge and constantly growing, which makes it necessary to choose elements best suited for the model and the original perspective presented here. First of all, the focus is on the calculus of the most prominent members of interest groups who are closest to political processes and attempting to figure out what their priorities may be.8 We also consider how they would like other members of their group to think and behave to further improve their own standing, assuming individuals to be utilitymaximizers.9 It is important to note here that it is their calculation based on a set of factors and preferences that’s under scrutiny, with actual behavior coming in second and outside of the model since the model is about a certain kind of individual calculation. Therefore, analyzed is not the logic nor activities of entire interest groups but the calculus of the political decision-makers among their ranks. Later, after having assumed their interests do not necessarily coincide with those of other members of the groups they belong to, conclusions are drawn regarding the calculus of such individuals when faced with political decision-making. We end up speaking about a situation in which various interest groups take part in political processes through a set of representatives who are more inclined to pursue goals that vary from those supported by people they owe their privileged positions to. What is more, they can be seen as having more in common, as far as private calculus is concerned, with their colleagues from other groups, even opposing ones, than with rank-and-file members of their own groups.
In such a context, one could see that the dissimilarity of interests within interest groups can lead to a situation in which subgroups of interest are formed. If this involves the most prominent and influential members of such groups oriented toward political processes, it would be only logical to assume that they bring their own incentives and calculi to political decision-making. It would also appear logical that a certain preference would indeed favor a certain conduct. Since we are focused on the calculus of individual members of interest groups,10 rather than the interest groups themselves, the analysis is going to be structured accordingly, i.e., to avoid going too deep into the territory of interest group typology while selecting concepts that would better inform the model.
It is my intention to make a contribution to political philosophy by introducing a model of individual calculation that sheds light on the motivations and priorities of interest group members who are involved in the political process. The analysis is based on available literature and should hopefully produce a philosophical public choice take on the workings of interest groups involved in political decision-making. The model is meant to provide a more direct representation of the dissimilarity of private interests within such groups, even if only based on several factors, by focusing on the perspective of the members who are closest to political processes. I would also like to see the model as providing a complementary or even alternative explanation for some attitudes of individuals operating in the public domain as members of interest groups. The assumed approach suggests dissimilarity of interests between certain members of interest groups that does not necessarily need to be seen in terms of conflict since the result of such a situation does not need to negatively affect either side.
The model makes use of a public-choice-inspired philosophical approach based predominantly on the works of James M. Buchanan and his constitutional economy. It takes a certain set of individuals within interest groups and explains a significant dissimilarity of interest between these more privileged members of groups and other members who are not directly involved in political processes. Additional considerations and comments on certain limitations and possible consequences stemming from the model will also be addressed. Even though this contribution is presented through a model, it would be prudent to emphasize that the term model is being used in a more colloquial sense, as an illustration of a set of ideas being ascribed to certain individuals. Both the model and the content leading to it are placed in the context of public choice theory and in the spirit of the philosophy of liberalism and political philosophy, rather than economic modeling and sociological analysis.
James M. Buchanan and public choice as a political philosophy
I believe that the second part of the title, asserting the use of a public choice approach, requires at least a brief explanation and introduction of its own. Public choice can be considered to have emerged as a branch of political philosophy around 1948 in the United States. Since the 1930s, the US has experienced much dissatisfaction with market processes, with authors such as Abram Bergson11 wondering about the means through which private “utilitarian ethics could be incorporated into the government planner’s objective function and help to achieve a social welfare maximum.”12 Authors such as Paul A. Samuelson or Kenneth Arrow followed up on some of Bergson’s ideas in their own works, providing further analysis on the “problems of aggregating individual preferences to maximize an SWF [social welfare function – B.O.].”13 But how are we to position such interests and notions within the philosophical public choice approach employed here?
Dennis C. Mueller manages to explain it eloquently by acknowledging the interdisciplinary character of public choice as a field of study and as an approach. He observes that Aristotle’s opinion of the Greeks of his time was that they were interested in discourse and politics, while centuries later Adam SmiThisaw 18th century Scots as interested in economic exchange. These two intuitions could be seen to illustrate the emergence of “the science of politics and the science of economics.”14 For the most part, they went their separate ways, divided by separate assumptions regarding human motivation as well as employed methodologies. “Political science has often assumed that political man pursues the public interest. Economics has assumed that all men pursue their private interests.”15 However, such a dichotomy is not something necessary, which is where public choice comes into play by assuming that both the “political man and economic man”16 can be combined within a person, thus providing a more accurate approximation to actual people.
Mueller defines public choice17 as the “economic study of nonmarket decisionmaking, or simply the application of economics to political science.”18 Its scope covers the topics usually present in political science, such as “the theory of the state, voting rules, voter behavior, party politics, the bureaucracy, and so on.”19 As for its economic component, it postulates that “man is an egoistic, rational, utility maximizer.”20 Furthermore, he assumes that “this places public choice within the stream of political philosophy extending at least from Thomas Hobbes and Benedict Spinoza, and within political science from James Madison and Alexis de Tocqueville.”21 While acknowledging that there might be approaches within public choice leaning more towards the economy or political sciences, our focus here is on political philosophy and constitutional economy.
Even though we are referencing various scholars, it is the work of James M. Buchanan that should be seen as setting the tone for our approach, together with The Calculus of Consent: Logical Foundations of Constitutional Democracy (hereafter: The Calculus of Consent), which he coauthored with Gordon Tullock. In this particular case, it might be up for debate which of the authors had more impact on the final form of their work, while keeping in mind that they did not try to approach the subject from the same perspective. As Buchanan himself would put it years after The Calculus of Consent was first published, “economics, defined as a broad and inclusive research program, falls variously along a methodological spectrum between predictive science and philosophical inquiry. If classification is restricted to the polar extremes, Tullock becomes the scientist of the authorship pairing while Buchanan assumes the philosopher’s role.”22 Even with that hint, it still proves challenging to assess which passages have more Buchanan or more Tullock in them, especially since one could also “argue that Calculus provides a genuine synthesis of the methods and views of both authors.”23 Such ambiguities should not, however, become a problem in themselves for our work here, since we are considering topics that do not require us to settle such nuances in order to make the conclusions valid. As for Buchanan, apart from works published in corroboration with other authors, I also refer to his other writings that contain only his own perspective, thus allowing us to analyze his original views. Let us also keep in mind that the public choice approach assumed here is not meant to simply emulate the views of James M. Buchanan, even if his strong influence on it is something I do acknowledge.
Back in 1986, James M. Buchanan was awarded the Alfred Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences “for his development of the contractual and constitutional bases for the theory of economic and political decision-making.”24 He was praised for coming up with a comprehensive theoretical formulation of what is now referred to as political economy or public choice theory. One of his most significant contributions is transferring the “concept of gain derived from mutual exchange between individuals to the realm of political decision-making.”25
This makes the political process a means of cooperation26 that individuals enter to secure benefits, but the way they play the political game depends on the rules of the game (a broad understanding of a constitution), thus the importance of studying the formulation of constitutional rules. The understanding of the word constitution is not necessarily that of a written document similar to present-day national constitutions, but rather a form of a basic rule or rules of the game, the most fundamental set of laws on which people agree to come together and perform certain activities collectively.27 Such a model of collective choice-making has been developed by Buchanan in The Limits of Liberty. Between Anarchy and Leviathan (hereafter: The Limits of Liberty) from 1975 as well as, together with Gordon Tullock, in The Calculus of Consent, where they “have viewed politics as a two-stage process in which the ‘rules of the political game’ are written in the first stage and the game is played in the second stage.”28 What was also assumed was the concept of politics as an exchange.29 Since we are going to be more strongly oriented towards analyzing the private calculus and the behavior of individuals in the context of interest groups, we will be dealing more with the second stage. Individuals can make private decisions that bring results only they will experience, like the consequences of buying a shirt that is too big or shoes that are too small. However, when they come together in collective decision-making, their choices are indeed public choices, as they are made for the entire collective.
The public choice theory, also referred to as political economy30 is, by definition, an interdisciplinary field of study as it incorporates economy, philosophy,political sciences, and other related fields. It can also be credited with acknowledging the importance of institutions when considering the limitations that individual behavior is faced with in a society. Public choice theory is primarily interested in the sphere of politics while relying strongly on economics, decision theory, and game theory in terms of methodology. It also has a strong individualistic approach when it comes to methodology, and even when analyzing institutions, their conduct is assessed based on the decisions of the individuals they are comprised of. Such considerations could be of a theoretical as well as empirical character, with the most characteristic topics being the concepts of voting, logrolling, rent-seeking, business cycles, property rights, interest groups, the formation of coalitions, bureaucracy, etc.31
The public choice theory has emerged in the United States even though it is now internationally recognized and developed, but the focus is still mainly on the democratic societies of the West. The public choice approach is not a monolith, and even though it could be seen as having a rather normative bias, there are scholars like Kenneth Arrow who were more interested in the use of mathematical modeling to describe individual decision-making and developed his own social choice approach.32
The beginning of the public choice school of thought could be traced back to the 1940s and 1950s, when the first influential publications by Duncan Black (On the Rationale of Group Decision-Making, 1948) and Kenneth Arrow (Social Choice and Individual Values, 1951) attempted to analyze political markets with the tools traditionally used in economic studies. Also, Amartya Sen, while studying the social welfare function, came up with the notion of a liberal paradox, also referred to as Sen’s paradox, that agrees with Arrow in assuming that it is sometimes impossible to precisely assess what the majority actually calls for.33 On the other hand, such findings did not discourage Buchanan, who saw this as an optimistic research perspective. There was also Anthony Downs, with his An Economic Theory of Democracy from 1957, who approached the topic of voting in small groups of individuals. A little bit later, in 1965, Mancur Olson published The Logic of Collective Action, in which he analyzed the behavior of various interest groups from the perspective of rational choice and contributed greatly to the emergence of a scientific scrutiny of bureaucracy. These classics of public choice theory were mainly focused on voting and the emergence of a political lobby that would be cut off from external pressures, but Buchanan and Tullock modified that approach in their The Calculus of Consent from 1962 by coming up with a methodological program based on methodological individualism and contractualism while keeping the more liberal assumptions of homo oeconomicus and the rationality of individual decision-making and creating the basis for constitutional political economy.34 The term constitutional economy was actually introduced by Richard B. McKenzie and served as the title of a conference organized by the Heritage Foundation in Washington in 1982. The term was later adapted and used by public choice economists and philosophers centered around Buchanan at George Mason University.35
There are several influential centers for the public choice theory, each with its own characteristics, such as the Rochester School of Positive Political Theory with William Riker being one of its most recognizable representatives, the Chicago School of political economy with George Stigler or Gary Becker, as well as the Virginia School that was established by James M. Buchanan36 and had Gordon Tullock, Robert Tollison, and Richard Wagner among their ranks. These and other scholars cooperate with The Center for Study of Public Choice, established in 1969 by Buchanan himself at George Mason University. Their approach takes inspiration from the Chicago School of political economy, and their most famous scholar, Buchanan, combines elements of public choice theory with moral philosophy. They were critics of the social welfare function, perceiving it as a “mathematical monstrosity, which tries to establish a false aggregation of individual utilities.”37 What is also characteristic of Buchanan’s work is a strong connection with classical liberalism, which would bring him closer to the libertarian camp of Robert Nozick and David Gauthier.38 Buchanan perceived himself primarily as the father of a new discipline he referred to as constitutional political economy, which is a subfield of public choice theory, rather than as an economist in the orthodox sense of the term. Elements of his constitutional political economy are also something we are going to refer to later on. What should also be acknowledged is the gradual shift in the approach of Buchanan towards his work, which went from being more economically oriented, when he was still more closely cooperating with Gordon Tullock, towards his own, more philosophical and ethics-oriented approach in his later works. The moral factor played an important part in his writings.39 Ethics are going to become even more prominent in the writings of Buchanan in the 1990s, who developed to treat them as an element of culture that has a positive impact on the economy in the formation of a common mindset that impacts individual decision-making. For Buchanan, collective decisions can be reduced to individual decisions, which is part of his methodological approach, which also tells us more about his ontological assumptions regarding the individualistic idea of the nature of reality. It is a reductionist theory that is based on analyzing collective decisions at the level of rational decisions made by individuals.40
Buchanan should also be acknowledged to belong to the liberal tradition in political thought, arguably subscribing to “both philosophical and political liberalism.”41 Liberalism, in itself, constitutes a topic of extensive research due to its various usages and possible ranges of use and meaning. Even if we were to narrow down our analysis to American liberalism, the scope of possible definitions and nuances would still be considerable, also due to the fact that the understanding of the term itself evolved over time, producing, e.g., classical liberalism, democratic liberalism, social liberalism, etc. What is more, towards the end of the 19th century, liberalism started to incorporate new concepts regarding the means of achieving individual freedom with the help of public regulations42 which adds to its complexity. For instance, John Stuart Mill accepted the state intervening in the upbringing of children, caring for those who are mentally ill and underage, and in the relationship between the employee and the employer, e.g., to regulate working hours, etc.43 As for a more general definition of liberalism that would contain its most fundamental premises, one could refer to a publication by B. Sobolewska and M. Sobolewski,44 who highlight its individualistic approach, the importance of personal freedom, property rights, or the limitations to the power of public authorities they should respect.
Since some of the works of James M. Buchanan are going to be analyzed in the present work in greater detail, let us enrich our brief introduction of this prominent public choice author by placing him, as well as the public choice theory itself, within the scope of 20th century liberalism that deals with philosophical, ethical, economic, and political issues. The public choice theory could also be seen as going beyond the liberal dilemma connected with the relationship between an individual and the state by enriching it with the analysis of collective action.45
Details
- Pages
- 286
- Publication Year
- 2024
- ISBN (PDF)
- 9783631921975
- ISBN (ePUB)
- 9783631921982
- ISBN (Hardcover)
- 9783631911846
- DOI
- 10.3726/b22101
- Language
- English
- Publication date
- 2025 (January)
- Keywords
- public choice constitutional economics interest groups political parties political philosophy ethics social contract theory political processes collective action
- Published
- Berlin, Bruxelles, Chennai, Lausanne, New York, Oxford, 2024. 286 pp., 12 fig. col.
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