Historical Note

The problem ofjustifying democracy arises when a society sees the need for cooperative, collective action. Collective action may be needed to solve coordination problems, public goods problems, Prisoner's Dilemmas, and other structural problems of human interaction or perhaps to realize common ideals of justice in concrete political institutions. Once the need for collective action is established, one must ask how the goals of a cooperative endeavor are to be secured. Cooperation requires that individuals, at least over a specified range of activity, pursue a joint strategy. To assure voluntary compliance in a joint venture, cooperation must be to each person's advantage. However, each person may have an incentive to induce others to cooperate and to defect from the joint strategy in the hope of enjoying the fruits of cooperation without incurring the opportunity costs of compliance. This is the essence of the Prisoner's Dilemma, and considerations of this sort suggest that if collective action is to succeed, policies or strategies formed collectively must be coercively enforceable. Coercion, however, requires justification. Because solving the problem of rational noncompliance requires that collective decisions be coercively enforceable, the rules by which collective decisions are reached require justification. Douglas Rae neatly puts the problem of justification that emerges when political solutions are coercively enforceable as follows: "Once a political community has decided which of its members are to participate directly in the making of collective policy, an important question remains: 'How many of them must agree before a policy is imposed on the community?"" This is essentially the question to which the principle of democratic rule provides an answer: by what process are collective decisions to be made? Answering Rae's question requires a normative framework. We could say that a procedure for making collective decisions is justified if and

James M. Buchanan, winner of the Nobel Prize in Economics in 1986, was a pioneer of public choice and constitutional political economy, as well as contributing to many fields of study, including philosophy, political science, and public finance. Each chapter in this volume seeks to explore, critique, and emphasize the continuing relevance of the vast contributions of Buchanan to our understanding of political economy and social philosophy. The diversity in topics and approaches will make the volume of interest to readers in a variety of fields, and accessible to scholars from a variety of backgrounds providing the opportunity to further a cross-disciplinary exploration and discussion on market process theory.

DUALIST POPULAR CONSTITUTIONALISM A Reply to Michelman

For more than two decades, Constitutional Political Economy has occupied an important space in academia at the edges of economics, political science, law, and political philosophy. As new editors of the journal, we will do our best to assure that Constitutional Political Economy continues to play that role in the years to come. The field of Constitutional Political Economy is arguably one of the most important fields in the social sciences. The speed at which it has developed in particular in the past two decades is breathtaking. When the journal was founded, scholars in the field were primarily interested in normative and methodological issues. Positive empirical work on the cross-country, state, and communal effects of constitutions emerged in the decades after its founding. Recent work notes that constitutions are adopted at some point and revised. The new work explores the factors that make different societies choose very different—or very similar—constitutional rules. As editors, we look forward to receiving submissions from all areas and approaches in the field. We would like to take this opportunity to thank Alan Hamlin, Dennis Mueller, and Peter Ordeshook for all their work to establish Constitutional Political Economy as the premiere journal in this field. Our goal is to continue the fine work done by them in the past decade. We will continue to include and seek out significant empirical, theoretical, methodological, and philosophical contributions to the field. A journal naturally reflects its contributors more than its editors, so you—both readers and contributors—are the most important determinants of the journal’s continued success.

Abstract. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the balance of economics and political science in Islamic political economy. The economic science here refers to economics value based on Islamic teaching, while political science refers to political value based on Islam. Whereas Islamic political science is a field that evaluates the interaction between the Islamic economy and politics as well as the implication of the influences of one field on the other.Beyond this assessment, between the economic and political value, which one is more influential in Islamic political economy? To date, most scholars are inclined towards the influence of their respective field. For those in economic field, the focus of Islamic political economy is mostly directed towards economic value rather than political value.Similarly, those who are in politics will be more inclined towards the political value rather than economic.Thus, which of the political or economic value should be made priority in Islamic political economy? Based on literature review and textual analysis, this paper will firstly, re-evaluate the issue where it is perceived that Islamic political economy does not necessarily need to focus on both political and economic value; secondly, analyse the extent to which the economic and political values are needed in Islamic political economy; and thirdly, summarise the option between the economic and political value in Islamic political economy in order to achieve a holistic field of study in overcoming problems and presenting solution for the political economy of the Ummah (Islamic nation). Keywords. Economic Value, Political Value, Islamic Political Economy. JEL. P47, P26, P16.

Prior to the 1970s, political science for the most part happily ignored questions of production, exchange, consumption, and investment. The new prominence of Marxist and neo-Marxist scholarship in that decade as well as the transformation of many institutions, trends and premises of the post-World War II order (including the collapse of Bretton Woods, the rise of OPEC and Third World liberation movements, the advent of detente, and the first global recession since the Great Depression) ushered many innovative themes and methodologies into our discipline. Political economy was the most direct result of both these trends, taking its place as one of the first of a wave of “inter-” or “multidisciplinary” fields of study.Darel E. Paul is Assistant Professor of Political Science at Williams College, Williamstown, MA (dpaul@williams.edu). He is the author of Rescaling International Political Economy: Subnational States and the Regulation of the Global Political Economy (Routledge, 2005) as well as of several articles on cities in the contemporary global political economy.

Iran's Political Economy since the Revolution

The article shows the weakness of mainstream Polish political science. Its main weakness, according to the author, is omitting the industrial and corporate power conflict among the factors determining the contemporary politics. As a result, the relations between political science and political economy have become weak. Its place as a source of inspiration for political scientists has been taken by social philosophy. It seeks the various non-economic sources of politics. The postulated critical political science puts in the spotlight the main processes of the global capitalist economy located in a phase of stagnation and closing in on the natural limits of its duration. In particular, closer attention should be focused on tracking a new, already the fifth configuration of the market society. It will be the several partial processes weave; the recovery process of autonomy by the state to corporations and the financial sector (deglobalisation); the process of recovering control of the state by the old and new social movements (democracy participatory), and the process of transformation of the energy economy, coupled with the process of changing lifestyles: from consumerism to paideia as a human community responsive to its activity on the development, openness and creativity in shaping new rules for civilization.

US politics is living a tense period of transformation. Approaching the presidential elections of 2024, many commentators question the fate of the US representative democracy and its political system. Political scientists have largely contributed to the critical analysis of the US case. A special mention goes to Jacob Hacker and Paul Pierson. The two scholars have marked the last two decades of US political science with a brilliant reconstruction of the American crisis and some of its key trends: the progressive increase of inequality; the mounting role of business lobbies; the decline of the US political economy and the erosion of the federal institutions. The present research note reviews three key books that shed light on contemporary US political economy through a typical political science approach. The value of these books goes well beyond the originality of the analysis of US politics. The books remind us the importance of three theoretical domains that marked political science and that merit to be further developed: interest group theory, neo-institutionalism and historical theories of democratization. Then, they shed light on the current dramatic tensions over representative democracies, well beyond the US exceptionalism. Hacker and Pierson provide an illuminating analysis of democratic tensions and give insights for the future research agenda of scholars of western political economies (including Italy and Europe). The books eventually outline some interesting methodological lines of future research.

The expert authors in this timely volume offer diverse perspectives on how corruption distorts state and market relations, while drawing from insights in political science, economics, and law. This book represents a new wave of research in political economy, relying on methodological rigor to address topics ranging from corruption in taxation and trade to crony capitalism and false anticorruption reforms. Key chapters provide a thorough review of the literature on links between political connections and democratic institutions. Special attention is paid to the OECD Anti Bribery Convention, the US Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, China’s anti-corruption drive, and language used to discuss tax evasion. Case studies from various regions—such as China, Paraguay, South Africa, and New York City— anchor the analysis with real world situations. Greed, Corruption, and the Modern State is a critical resource for students, researchers, and practitioners interested in development, economics, governance, and corruption.

Walter Bagehot (1826–1877) Stephen Donadio WALTER BAGEHOT (1826–1877) was a Victorian political analyst and social theorist who served as editor of The Economist, which still offers its readers a column in each issue designated in his honor. Born into a banking family in Langport, Somerset, he was educated at Bristol College, where he distinguished himself in the study of classics and mathematics, as well as German and Hebrew; since his background was Unitarian, he did not pursue his university studies at Oxford or Cambridge, which were distinctly Anglican, and chose instead University College, London, where he formed a lively debating society. His health was problematic, but in 1846 he was awarded a first-class degree in classics, and he remained at the university to further his studies in moral philosophy and political economy, securing an MA degree. His subsequent training qualified him to practice law, but he decided on a career in the family bank because it would allow him more freedom to become an author. His writing career effectively began when, in Paris in late 1851, he witnessed the coup d’état by Louis Napoleon and published a reasoned defense of it in a Unitarian journal called The Inquirer. What he wrote was consciously provocative, challenging the assumptions of many of his friends and contending that situations of extreme disorder might require measures that would not be defensible in more settled circumstances. Over the next decades, Bagehot’s writings would continue to be characterized by a persistent critical independence. Not long after his return from Paris, he became a co-founder (along with his university friend Richard Holt Hutton) of the National Review, and in addition to essays in political analysis his publications in that journal would include literary assessments of authors like Shakespeare, Shelley, Dickens, Gibbon, Scott, and Macaulay. Seeking to place some of his work in The Economist, in 1857 Bagehot established a connection with its owner, James Wilson, who asked him to produce a series of articles on banking. Later that year, after a passionate courtship, he and Wilson’s eldest daughter were engaged to be married; they took up residence in the Somerset area, where Bagehot’s employment in the family bank continued and he continued to publish. Appointed to an important financial position in India, Wilson gave his son-in-law oversight over The Economist, and Bagehot went on make his friend Hutton the editor. After Wilson’s death in 1860 and Hutton’s resignation in 1861, Bagehot himself assumed the editorship, which he held until his own death in 1877. During these last years he wrote regularly on a variety of topics. His study of the workings of government entitled The English Constitution came out in 1867. Physics and Politics, which took account of work in anthropology and evolutionary theory to probe the origins of political communities, appeared in 1872, and was followed the next year by Lombard Street, a highly influential work centered on the operations of the Bank of England and the organization of the larger economy. The pages presented here are taken from “The Metaphysical Basis of Toleration,” which is included in Volume III of Bagehot’s Literary Studies, published in 1903 by Longmans, Green, and Co., London, New York, and Bombay. —SD [End Page 186] Copyright © 2016 Middlebury College Publications

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to explore the manner in which the degree of substitutability between public and private health expenditures contributes towards the distribution of wealth and political economy outcomes in the long run.Design/methodology/approachAn overlapping generations model with heterogeneous agents where a person’s probability of survival into old age is determined by a variable elasticity of substitution (VES) health production function with public and private expenditures as inputs is developed. Public expenditure on health is determined through a political economy process.FindingsAnalytical and numerical results reveal that higher substitutability between private and public expenditures at the aggregate level and a higher share of public spending in the production of health lead to higher long run wealth levels and lower inequality. In the political equilibrium, higher aggregate substitutability between public and private health expenditures is associated with more tax revenue allocated towards public health. For most parameter combinations, the political economy and welfare maximising proportions of tax revenue allocated towards public health care converge in the long run.Research limitations/implicationsThe paper is a theoretical investigation of how substitutability between public and private health expenditures affect transitional and long run macroeconomic outcomes. These results are amenable to further empirical investigation.Practical implicationsThe findings indicate that policies to improve institutional aspects that yield higher substitutability between public and private health expenditures and returns to public health spending could lead to better long run economic outcomes.Social implicationsThe results provide a political economy explanation for the low investments in public health care in developing countries, where aggregate substitutability between public and private health expenditures is likely to be lower. Furthermore, comparing the political economy and welfare maximising paradigms broadens the scope of the framework developed herein to provide potential explanations for cross-country differences in health outcomes.Originality/valueThis paper adopts an innovative approach to exploring this issue of substitutability in health expenditures by introducing a VES health production function. In an environment where agents have heterogeneous wealth endowments, this specification enables a distinction to be made between substitutability of these expenditures at the aggregate and individual levels, which introduces a rich set of dynamics that feeds into long run outcomes and political economy results.

In this introduction, we will first discuss the methodological affinities between the market process and public choice approaches to political economy, and then suggest that because of these affinities market process scholars should feel at home using public choice analysis to study politics, and public choice scholars should feel at home using market process analysis to study the economy. In a fundamental sense, public choice theory refers to the application of the economic way of thinking to study the political process. 1 The economic way of thinking deals with individual decision-making, and exchange relationships in a variety of social settings. Mises is arguably the first scholar to champion a unification of the social sciences by way of a common rational choice model. 2 And, Hayek should be recognized as one of the forerunners of the economics of politics with his The Road to Serfdom (1945) and constitutional political economy with his The Constitution of Liberty (1960). 3 Furthermore, Buchanan and Tullock's contribution to modern political economy touch on these themes: rational choice, catallactics or exchange, and constitutional construction. The papers in this special issue of The Review of Austrian Economics by Buchanan and Vanberg, Levy, Foldvary, and Naka point to the strong methodological and theoretical affinities between public choice and market process economists. The papers by Holcombe, Sutter, Benson, and Lopez move from the methodological and theoretical level to the realm of applied theory and empirical work.

This essay explores the affinities between Vincenzo Gioberti’s Del primato morale e civile degli italiani (1843) and the constitutional political economy advanced by Adrian Pabst and Roberto Scazzieri in The Constitution of Political Economy: Polity, Society and the Commonwea l (2023). Gioberti argued that Italy’s political regeneration required a prior renewal of its moral and civil order, insisting that institutions cannot be legitimate or enduring unless grounded in dispositions, associations and collective vocation. Pabst and Scazzieri similarly reject contractarian and institutionalist accounts of political economy, proposing instead that polity and economy are constituted by interdependencies, proportionality, systemic interests and dispositions. By placing these works in dialogue, the essay highlights convergences in their conception of politics as constitution rather than contract, their emphasis on civil association, their recognition of structural embeddedness and their understanding of persistence and transformation as mutually dependent. At the same time, important divergences are acknowledged: Gioberti’s teleological nationalism and reliance on providential history contrast with the pluralism and secular structural analysis of Pabst and Scazzieri. The comparison suggests that constitutional political economy is best understood as both structural and civil: grounded in coherence, viability and proportionality, but equally dependent on dispositions and collective imagination. In contemporary Europe, where crises of legitimacy, inequality and ecological sustainability prevail, such a civil-structural vision of political economy offers a timely, critical resource for re-thinking the commonweal.

Despite global recognition of the urgency of climate action and the need to transition to a low-carbon economy, greenhouse gas emissions continue to rise, and adaptation needs remain urgent. For a number of years, there have been calls for greater attention to political economy in tackling climate change and development outcomes. The political economy analysis is important as it can be used to assess the factors that may enable or constrain the implementation of climate change policies and actions and sustain political commitment. A framework can guide the process of political economy analysis, identifying relevant stakeholders, their incentives and motives, and other structural factors. This rapid review summarises several such frameworks specifically aimed at climate governance issues developed in recent years, some of these also include useful guidance and steps on the implementation of the framework. The review focuses strictly on the literature around political economy analyses in relation to climate change. It does not explore the history of and rationale for political economy analysis in development in general, nor the accompanying frameworks or operational How-To guides. Another K4D helpdesk by Lucas (2019) looking at what factors affect the political will of African governments to address climate change highlights a number of political economy frameworks that may also be useful to draw on.