Public choice is often abbreviated as ‘politics without romance’. In the Brief mention in the Encyclopedia of Economicswe summarize this romanticism to be overcome as:
Wishful thinking…that participants in the political sphere strive to promote the common good. The conventional view of ‘public interest’ portrays government officials as benevolent ‘public servants’ who faithfully carry out the ‘will of the people’. In looking after the public’s affairs, voters, politicians and policymakers are expected to somehow rise above their own narrow interests.
Public choice helps explain why, instead of selfless, exalted public servants pursuing only the public good, we see problems like log rolling, rent seeking, and the concentration of power.
But there is another kind of romantic politics, to which fans of public choices are much more sensitive. It is the romantic idea that, in response to the problems with politics revealed by public choice, we can abolish politics altogether.
The theory is that if we can control the institutions and incentives, we can take the reins of politics out of those areas of life. There are two problems with this theory. First, we should not start from scratch, but from the world we find ourselves in. This means that the problems of public choice apply to the process that would bring about these changes. The second is related: it ignores that people do things through politics for a reason in the first place.
We’re stuck together.
Adam Smith understood this. One of his most famous statements is about the “man of system.” The man of the system ‘seems to imagine that he can arrange the different members of a great society with as much ease as the hand arranges the different pieces on a chessboard. He does not consider that the pieces on the chessboard have no principle of motion other than that which the hand presses on them.”TMS VI.ii.2.17)
Market liberals often use this quote to illustrate the flawed idea behind it comprehensive economic planning. But that’s not what Smith was talking about. Smith talked about political change.
For example, Smit didn’t think that completely free trade was politically possible. It can only be accomplished by a man with a system. [1] Only a man with a system could put aside political interests and organizations that would stand in the way of free trade. Only a man with a sense of systems would try to organize what was left to make that change sustainable.
Instead of, Smith acknowledges the importance of existing political structures, interests and groups. Someone “whose public spirit is wholly motivated by humanity and benevolence” must compromise and act politically. “He will adapt his public regulations as best he can to the confirmed customs and prejudices of the people; and will, as best he can, remedy the inconveniences which may arise from the want of rules to which the people are unwilling to submit. If he cannot determine the good, he will not hesitate to correct the bad; but like Solon, if he fails to establish the best system of laws, he will endeavor to establish the best that the people can endure.” (TMS VI.ii.2.16)
Like it or not, some movement principles are political.
Exchange and change
James Buchanan, who coined the term “politics without romance,” argued that modeling politicians and bureaucrats as economic actors “is not enough. If you start thinking about politics in that way, you have a very empty kind of theory. What should be added to that should be the idea that at an ultimate level people should enter into political arrangements for mutual gain.” (Buchanan intellectual portrait series, 8:50)
The implicit hope for limits on politics that will solve the problems of politics is that the small-government policies frustrated by democratic politics can be imposed at one time in another way. Then things just run naturally. The new rules will become the background conditions for ordering society.
Overemphasis on emerging institutions may be partly responsible for the temptation to view institutions as background conditions that can be taken for granted. In reality, institutions and rules also lie in the domain of politics. Institutions that can be improved do not automatically fade into the background. They can also be reversed or worsened from the status quo.
Those who want to depoliticize society hope for a lasting restriction of government action. There are two ways in which action can be limited. The first is to forbid politics from breaking out again. This requires that the power to determine the boundaries of politics be concentrated in a number of institutions that are not subject to democratic pressure. The libertarian warning that we should not create power that we would not hand over to our political opponents comes to mind.
The second way to bring about lasting change is to do the persuasive work that would have brought about those changes – or the best approach the people can tolerate – through democratic politics. This method does not save anyone from the problems in politics that public choice so usefully identifies. But unlike a solution that prevents politics from breaking out, democratic conviction keeps power dispersed and people treated as equals, with their own movement principles.
It’s not so neat and tidy. It’s not that romantic. But it is democratic. It’s liberal. That should be enough.
[1] Thanks to Jacob T. Levy for this observation.
[2] Thanks to Mike Munger for pointing out this quote.
[3] In the interview, Buchanan rejects the view that any single theory, even public choice, explains politics.