The Calculus Of Consent. Logical Foundations Of Constitutional Democracy Buchanan James M.; Tullock Gordon

First edition, first printing. 8vo. x, [2], 361, [1] pp. Original black-grey cloth, spine lettered in gilt, dust jacket (internally clean and unmarked; jacket with short closed tear to head of front joint and some trivial wear to extremities, notwithstanding an excellent example of the rare jacket). Ann Arbor, MI; The University of Michigan Press. One of the great works of twentieth century economics and political science, a foundational text in the discipline of 'public choice', and a major contributor to Buchanan's awarding of the Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences in 1986 - exceedingly scarce in the dust jacket, which is seldom encountered in anything approaching collectable condition. ?Buchanan and Tullock discuss political institutions in the same manner as the economist discusses the market. They begin with the individual as he participates in the processes through which group choices are organized. Government is treated as a co-operative endeavor on the part of a number of people of differing tastes to increase their abilities to reach the separate objectives. As in economics, the basic question becomes one of efficiency - which set of governmental institutions will best serve the individual ends of the citizens? (jacket). In so doing, the work ?earns its authors the undying enmity of all would-be philosopher kings who had been riding high on the paradigm of market failure. For, with brilliant insight, the two Virginians demonstrate that the failures of private markets. manifest themselves in much more chronic forms in political markets. In this way, they level the intellectual playing field concerning the relative effectiveness of private and political markets in achieving economic efficiency. The book also became the fulcrum for the establishment of the Public Choice Society, a forum through which scholars working in this newly established field could meet on an annual basis to exchange ideas? (Dictionary of American Economists, I, p. 103).