Are there Alternative Traditions in Public Choice? An Introduction

Abstract

This brief note introduces readers to the papers published in this issue on the theme of “Alternative Traditions in Public Choice.” While the field of Public Choice is commonly seen to have been born of Buchanan and Tullock’s Calculus of Consent (1962), the guest editors encouraged submissions to consider alternative influences. Instead, the papers illustrate the difficulty of disentangling Public Choice from the influence of Buchanan and the underlying political philosophy of the Virginia School. This suggests something about the importance of Buchanan in the field but, also, tells us that scholars themselves have difficulties to escape the path-dependence that exists in the history of economic thought.

Keywords

• public choice
• Buchanan (James)
• new political macroeconomics
• Downs (Anthony)
• Knight (Frank)
• Tullock (Gordon)