Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-rcrh6 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-27T14:53:21.654Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Economic Theories of Politics and Public Finance

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 January 2009

J. F. J. Toye
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Over the last twenty years a succession of theories of politics has appeared of which the hallmark is an attempt to adapt utilitarian marginalism to the purpose of political explanation. Theories in this intellectual style may be designated ‘economic’ theories of politics since utilitarian marginalism was first developed in the context of economic theorizing; its invention was indeed the birth of a notion of ‘economies’ as distinct from the ‘political economy’of Smith, Ricardo, Marx and J. S. Mill. Anthony Downs pioneered the economic approach with his bravura economic theory of democracy in 1957, which remains probably the best-known example of it. Many of the fundamental objections to economic theories of politics were explored by C. B. Macpherson in 1961 in a brief but penetrating essay; but Macpherson's essay was not decisive in checking the popularity of such theories. Despite his criticism, they have continued to proliferate.

Type
Research Article
Information
British Journal of Political Science , Volume 6 , Issue 4 , October 1976 , pp. 433 - 447
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1976

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Downs, A., An Economic Theory of Democracy (New York: Harper and Row, 1957).Google Scholar

2 Macpherson, C. B., ‘Market Concepts in Political Theory’, Canadian Journal of Economics and Political Science, XXVII (1961), 490–7Google Scholar: reprinted as Essay X in Macpherson, , Democratic Theory: Essays in Retrieval (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1973).Google Scholar

3 Frohlich, N., Oppenheimer, J. A. and Young, O. R., Political Leadership and Collective Goods (Princeton. N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1971).Google Scholar

4 Powelson, J., Institutions of Economic Growth (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1972).Google Scholar

5 Breton, A., The Economic Theory of Representative Government (London: Aldine Treatises in Modern Economics: Macmillan, 1974).Google Scholar

6 Breton, , Representative Government, pp. 9–10, 207.Google Scholar

7 Barry, B. M., Sociologists, Economists and Democracy (London and Toronto: Collier-Macmillan, 1970), pp. 13–22, 99–125.Google Scholar

8 Macpherson, , Democratic Theory, p. 185.Google Scholar

9 Levy, M. Jr., in Frohlich, , Oppenheimer, and Young, , Political Leadership, pp. vii–ix.Google Scholar

10 Barry, , Sociologists, pp. 176–7.Google Scholar

11 Gray, J., ‘The Chinese Model: Some Characteristics of Maoist Policies for Social Change and Economic Growth’ in Nove, A. and Nuti, D. M., eds., Socialist Economics (London: Penguin Education, 1972), p. 494.Google Scholar

12 Hall, A. R., From Galileo to Newton, 1630–1720 (London: Collins, 1963), pp. 108–23.Google Scholar

13 Levy, , in Frohlich, , Oppenheimer, and Young, , Political Leadership, p. viii.Google Scholar

14 E.g. Pryor, F. L., Public Expenditure in Communist and Capitalist Nations (London: Allen and Unwin, 1968), pp. 454–5Google Scholar; Burkehead, J. and Miner, J., Public Expenditure (London: Macmillan, 1971), p. 171Google Scholar: Dar, U., Expenditure Control: Problems and Evaluation (Allahabad: Chaitanya Publishing House, 1964), p. 1Google Scholar: Bird, R. M., The Growth of Public Spending in Canada (Toronto: Canadian Tax Foundation, 1970), pp. 61, 126–7.Google Scholar

15 Johnson, H. G. in Breton, , Representative Government, p. xiii.Google Scholar

16 Downs, A., ‘Why the Government Budget is Too Small in a Democracy’, World Politics, XII (1960), 541–63Google Scholar. All subsequent page references to this article are to the text as it appears in Davis, J. W., ed., Politics, Programs, and Budgets (Englewood Cliffs, N. J.: Prentice-Hall, 1969), pp. 27–44Google Scholar. A misleadingly edited version of the same article was previously published in Phelps, E. S., ed., Private Needs and Public Wants (NewHaven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1964).Google Scholar

17 Downs, , Democracy, p. 297, proposition 7.Google Scholar

18 Downs, , Democracy, p. 21.Google Scholar

19 Lotz, J., ‘Patterns of Government Spending in Developing Countries’, Manchester School of Social and Economic Studies, XXXVIII (1970), 119–44, p. 119. Emphasis added.Google Scholar

20 Downs, , Democracy, pp. 23–4.Google Scholar

21 Bernholz, P., ‘Economic Policies in a Democracy’, Kyklos, XIX (1966). 48–80, Fasc. 1.Google Scholar

22 Breton, , Representative Government, p. 80.Google Scholar

23 Downs, , Democracy, pp. 198–201, 234–6.Google Scholar

24 E.g. Swamy, S., ‘Structural Changes and the Distribution of Income by Size: the Case of India’, Review of Income and Wealth, Series 13, No. 2 (1967), 155–70Google Scholar; Nair, K. R. G., ‘A Note on Inter-State Income Differentials in India, 1950–51 to 1960–61’, Journal of Development Studies, VII (1971), 441–7Google Scholar: Mukherjee, M. and Chatterjee, G. S., ‘Trends in Distribution of National Income 1950–51 to 1965–66’, Economic and Political Weekly, 15 07 1967, pp. 1259–68.Google Scholar

25 Barry, , Sociologists, p. 108.Google Scholar

26 Downs, , ‘Government Budget’, p. 44.Google Scholar

27 Downs, , ‘Government Budget’, p. 30.Google Scholar

28 Downs, , ‘Government Budget’, p. 27.Google Scholar

29 Frey, R. and Kohn, L., ‘An Economic Interpretation of Voting Behaviour on Public Finance Issues’. Kyklos, XXIII (1970), Fasc. 4.Google Scholar

30 Downs, , ‘Government Budget’, p. 30.Google Scholar

31 Downs, , ‘Government Budget’, p. 43.Google Scholar

32 Breton, , Representative Government, p. 9.Google Scholar

33 Breton, , Representative Government, p. 204.Google Scholar

34 Willetts, P., ‘The Utility of Quantitative Methods in Foreign Policy Research’, Political Studies Association Annual Conference. 1974, p. 4.Google Scholar

35 Breton, , Representative Government, pp. 214–18.Google Scholar

36 Dobb, M., ‘The Trend of Modern Economies’, in Hunt, E. K. and Schwartz, J. G., eds., A Critique of Economic Theory (London: Penguin Education, 1971), pp. 39–80Google Scholar; Rowthorn, R., ‘Neo-Classicism, Neo-Ricardianism and Marxism’, New Left Review, No. 86 (08 1974), 64–71Google Scholar; Macpherson, , Democractic Theory, p. 176.Google Scholar

37 Barry, , Sociologists, p. 174Google Scholar; but cf. p. 163.

38 Breton, , Representative Government, p. 87.Google Scholar

39 Breton, , Representative Government, pp. 116–18.Google Scholar

40 Miller, D., ‘Ideology and the Problem of False Consciousness’, Political Studies, xx (1972), 432–47, pp. 442–4.Google Scholar

41 Arrow, K. J., ‘The Organization of Economic Activity: Issues Pertinent to the Choice of Market Versus Nonmarket Allocation’ in The Analysis and Evaluation of Public Expenditure: the P.P.B. System, Vol. I (Washington D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1969), p. 61Google Scholar; Seers, D., ‘Rich Countries and Poor’, in Seers, D. and Joy, L., eds., Development in a Divided World (London: Penguin, 1971), p. 26 and footnote.Google Scholar

42 Gunn, J. A. W.. Politics and the Public Interest in the Seventeenth Century (London and Toronto: Studies in Political History: Routledge and Kegan Paul and University of Toronto Press, 1969), pp. 22–4.Google Scholar

43 Barry, , Sociologists, p. 183.Google Scholar