Constitutional political economy: Ulysses and the prophet Jonah
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Constitutional political economy: Ulysses and the prophet Jonah Arye L. Hillman1 Accepted: 11 November 2020 © Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2020
Abstract The story of Ulysses and the sirens has been used to portray the theme of the field of constitutional political economy. Indeed, Ulysses adorns the cover of the field’s journal. I compare Ulysses and the prophet Jonah as constitutional allegories. The behavior of Ulysses does not transfigure to a constitution consistent with public-choice premises, while the behavior of Jonah does. A constitution transfigured from Ulysses provides privileged personal benefits for an autocratic ruler at the expense of social costs that historically often have entailed much more than placing wax in sailors’ ears. A constitution transfigured from Jonah requires leaders and politicians to exit government when the social cost from them staying on exceeds whatever social benefits their continuation in office may provide. Keywords Constitution · Political restraint · Athens versus Jerusalem · Ethics in governance JEL Classification B11 · B32
1 Introduction Constitutional political economy is a core part of a rendition of public choice and the political economy of governance (Hillman 2019). The origins of constitutional political economy are laid out in Buchanan and Tullock (1965). Subsequent statements include Buchanan (1990) and, more extensively, Vanberg (1994). Most basically, a two-stage societal collective decision process is proposed whereby rules at an initial constitutional stage constrain the subsequent everyday scope of discretion of governments and politicians. The central symbolic figure in constitutional political economy is Ulysses (Elster 1979, 2000). Ulysses reappears as illustrative and his behavior as exemplary when the principles of constitutional political economy are expounded (Voigt 2020), indeed so much so that Ulysses is the logo on the cover of the field journal (for commentary on the logo, see Brennan and Kliemt 1990). Ulysses can be compared with the prophet Jonah for transposing personal behavior into a societal constitution. Both make decisions that involve others in circumstances of ships (societies) in danger. * Arye L. Hillman [email protected] 1
Bar-Ilan University, 5290002 Ramat Gan, Israel
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2 Ulysses and the sirens Homer (circa 700 BCE) describes Odysseus, renamed Ulysses by the Romans, after having participated in the destruction of Troy, as returning home to the island of Ithaca where he is king. During the journey, his ship approaches the domain of the sirens (women conjoined with attributes of birds but in later renditions becoming mermaids, and singing to the selfaccompaniment of harps and lyres). The sirens are known for their seductive songs and music that lead sailors to be lulled into wrecking their ships on rocks to fall into the sirens’ merciless arms. Circe the goddess warns Ulysses: “If anyone unwarily draws in too close and hears the singing of the Sire
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