The Economic Theory of Representative Government
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ALDINE TREATISES IN MODERN ECONOMICS Edited by Harry G. Johnson University of Chicago
THE ECONOMIC THEORY OF REPRESENTATIVE GOVERNMENT
Albert Breton University of Toronto
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ISBN 978-1-349-02389-9 ISBN 978-1-349-02387-5 (eBook) DOI 10.1007/978-1-349-02387-5 ©Albert Breton 1974 Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 1974 978-0-333-17309-1 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without permission. First published in the U.S.A. 1974 First published in the United Kingdom 1974 Published by THE MACMILLAN PRESS LTD London and Basingstoke Associated companies in New York Dublin Melbourne Johannesburg and Madras
SBN 333 17309 0 Member of the Brown, Knight & Truscott Group London and Tonbridge
To Margot
There is nothing sacred about the conventional boundaries of economics; if the cycle were meteorological in origin, economists would branch out in that direction, just as in our day a political theory of fiscal policy is necessary if one is to understand empirical economic phenomena.
P. A.
SAMUELSON
Contents
Foreword ............................................ xi Acknowledgments .................................... xv
I.
BACKGROUND AND DEFINITIONS
I. An Introduction ................................... 3 2. The Output of Governments ........................ 16 3. The Institutional Framework ...................... .42
II.
THE STRUCTURE OF DEMAND
4. The Origins of Political Action ..................... 55 5. The Instruments of Political Participation ............ 74 6. The Demand for Government Policies ............... 99
III.
THE STRUCTURE OF SUPPLY
7. The Behavior of Political Parties .................. 123 8. Technical Constraints on the Behavior of the Governing Party ........................ 140 9. The Behavior of Bureaus ......................... 161
Contents
X
IV.
RESOURCE ALLOCATION IN THE PUBLIC SECTOR
10. The Equilibrium Quantity of Government Policies ........................... 179 11. Comparative Statical Displacements of Equilibrium ................................ 194 12. Conclusion ...................................... 205 V.
APPENDIX
Appendix I. The Case of Non-private Goods ........... 209 Appendix 2. The Long-Run Empirical Behavior of Public Expenditures ......... 214 Index ............................................. ;219
Foreword
The purpose of the Aldine Treatises in Modern Economics is to enable authorities in a particular field of economics, and experts on a particular problem, to make their knowledge available to others in the form they find easiest and most convenient. Our intention is to free them from an insistence on complete coverage of a conventionally defined subject, which deters many leading economists from writing a book instead of a series of articles or induces them to suppress originality for the sake of orthodoxy, and from an obligation to produce a standard number of pages, which encourages the submergence of judgment of relevance in a pudding of irrelevant detail. The Al
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