ECON 369
Lecture Three: Public Choice Part One - The Public Choice Revolution
From: "The Public Choice Revolution" by Gwartney and Wagner (in Public Choice Economics, ed. by Heckelman), The Myth of the Rational Voter by Bryan Caplan and other sources.
Remember: public choice economists assume that everyone, even those participating in the political process, act in their own self interest. This does not deny the existence of benevolence, but only to note that benevolence provides an inadequate basis for social organization.
Example: The requirements of electoral competition present even the most "public-spirited" or "benevolent" politician with a strong incentive to base decisions primarily on political considerations - meaning he must "search for votes." Just as neglect of economic profit is the route to market oblivion, so is neglect of potential votes the route to political oblivion!
Also - voters will act in their self interest. They will ask (regarding the politician), "What can you do for me and how much will it cost me?" They will vote for those who they believe will provide them with the most political goods, services, and transfer benefits net of personal costs. Of course sometimes those benefits and costs are perceived but not real.
So public choice economists ask: How does self-interest in the political process affect policy outcomes?
Who are the relevant actors in the political policy process and what are their motivations?
The actors:
The politicians are the decision-makers, they are influenced by the interests of various groups in the population expressed by voters and lobbyers. Bureaucrats are the administrators and managers who implement the decisions made by politicians.
In the 1950s and 1960s - most economists treated government as a "corrective device available to right the economic wrongs" of the world - as we saw in the "justifications for government" that we went through.
Economists were seen as those who developed solutions, which in turn were adopted by government to promote the general welfare.
But there were some economists who recognized that the real world was very different from this classroom vision of the government.
In reality - governments not only failed generally to adopt solutions of economists, but often intervened in ways that promoted economic inefficiency - clashing sharply with what economists thought were good policies.
Examples:
So some economists started asking "why do governments adopt these policies that promote economic inefficiency?"
Public Choice analysis provides the answer. "Government is not a corrective device.... Government is not a person, it has no mind or conscience. It is simply a set of processes by which people relate to one another. Governmental decisions and policies are simply the outcomes of the interactions of people who relate to one another through a particular political system or constitutional order."
So we need to systematically analyze how the political process works if we are going to understand why we get the outcomes that we get.
Again, just as we study markets - an important implication of public choice economics is that political outcomes will depend importantly on how political institutions and constitutional rules influence the incentives people face and not just on who in particular is elected or appointed to political office.
Rules - Incentives - Actions - Outcomes!!
So basically public choice analysis assumes (an assumption also held by the Founders of the American constitutional order) that a properly functioning political order depends not on the generosity or the self-denying capacities of those who engage in political activity, but on the presence of a well-constructed constitutional order that channels the pursuit of self-interest into generally desirable directions.
Example:
If a project generates more value than it costs, most citizens affected by the project are likely to gain, provided that taxpayers and beneficiaries are the same people. And vice versa -- if the project is a loser, then it won't pass - vote-seeking politicians won't have an incentive to pass such projects.
So a general principles emerges (that we will discuss in more detail later): so long as government acts in a non-discriminatory manner, thereby avoiding "the violence of faction," the individual pursuit of self-interest within political processes will tend to be harmonious with the general or common welfare (of course defined as individual welfare of all).
Violence of Faction:
However, and unfortunately -- that is not often the case! Also something the Founders (and Alexis de Tocqueville) understood -
"democratic political processes can, both through their police powers and their budgetary powers, become an instrument of discrimination that accommodates the plunder of some for the benefit of others."
Problems With Democracy
This is where we will study one of the major sub-sets of public choice theory that is known as "rent-seeking" - an examination of the various ways by which government can serve as an instrument of discrimination and plunder (we will have a more precise definition later).
Rather than applying resources to the creation of wealth, rent-seeking uses resources to redistribute previously created wealth!
Wealth creation: Making the pie larger.
Rent Seeking: Redistributing the pie.
The incentive to engage in rent-seeking is directly proportional to the ease with which the political process can be used to transfer income and modify existing property rights. When government becomes more involved in transfer activities and when it fails to link its expenditures with taxes, the payoff to rent-seeking expands and rent-seeking attracts resources away from socially productive activities.
Resources that otherwise would have increased the size of the pie (by the way, pie = wealth, anything people value) - will be used for rent-seeking instead.
The employment of lobbyists, "expert" witnesses, lawyers, accountants, and other political specialists capable of influencing public policy and /or the size of one's tax bill will increase. By contrast, engineers, architects, physical scientists, craft workers, machine operators and other workers that actually create goods and services will decline as a share of the labor force.
Has rent-seeking increased?
Some data (according to OpenSecrets.org): Between 1976 and 1983 the number of lobbyists registered with the federal government rose from 3,420 to 6,500 (90% increase in 7 years). By 2011, the number was 12,628 - an increase of about 94% between 1983 and 2011. Although - there has been a declining trend during the recession (money for lobbying, just like for everything else, has been in shorter supply). So most recent number for 2015 is 11,169 lobbyists.
http://www.opensecrets.org/lobby/
We will look into rent-seeking in detail later.
Are Special Interests Really to Blame?
Another theory, however, which also operates in the realms of public choice but disagrees that special interests are to blame -- says that it is not just that special interests are harming democracy - but that people, in general, vote for "bad" policies because they truly believe that they are good ones (Bryan Caplan).
This goes beyond "rational ignorance" (although that plays a role):
This is what Caplan calls, "rational irrationality":
His argument is that people vote for things because they really don't understand the outcomes of what they are voting for. They believe in "myths" -- a lot of times which back up their political ideology (and who wants to go against their political ideology)?
We will also discuss his theory in detail under voting.
Sources of the problems with Democracy
The theory of public choice recognizes that problems in democracy arise out of some institutional features that distinguish political processes from market processes. These features lead to:
1.
2.
3.
The first arises out of a disconnect between benefits and costs of individual voters. If I can get you to pay for my goodie - then I will be more involved in the process!
This is where we will study special interest groups and legislation (or concentrated benefits with costs spread widely among voters).
Why do politicians pay more attention to special interest groups? We will answer that question. But it lends itself to politicians being short-sighted and also a lot of economic inefficiency.
Examples:
Shortsightedness is also promoted with this system because what happens prior to the next election is of crucial importance to the incumbent politicians. Since issues of public policy are complex, most voters will simply vote based upon what is happening (the economic conditions) on election day.
So shortsighted policies are adopted instead of sound long-range policies.
Unlike their market counterparts, who can borrow against anticipated future benefits to stay in business now, politicians have limited ability to capture prospective future benefits from wise decisions. As a result, politicians tend to exaggerate the importance of policy impacts prior to the next election and to discount excessively their post-election consequences.
This shortsightedness often leads to a conflict between good politics and sound economics!
Examples:
Bureaus perform the day to day functions of government. We will study how bureaucrats behave and why. There are several reasons why it is extremely difficult for a legislative body to control the cost effectiveness of a bureau and promote operational efficiency (esp. if the bureau is a monopoly supplier - like the Post Office). https://about.usps.com/news/national-releases/2015/pr15_046.htm
One main reason: bureaus do not have an easily identifiable bottom line analogous to the net income of a corporation, that might be used to judge the bureau's performance. We will look at more reasons in detail.
Constitutional Implications of Public Choice
Both bad news and good news flow from public choice analysis:
The bad news: unconstrained democratic government is far from being a corrective device, and is rather itself a major source of economic waste and inefficiency.
"Economists who formulate optimizing solutions to market failure that are inconsistent with the operation of political organization might as well be spending their time working crossword puzzles." (Gwartney and Wagner) In other words -- those who see a "market failure" and think there is no "government failure" are wasting their time and ours!!
Sound economics must be comparative economics - we must compare viable alternatives - not something to a made-up perfect world.
Compare different institutional frameworks.
The good news: if the rules of politics are structured property, which is a task for constitutional construction, many of the adverse consequences of the political process can be limited. Public choice theory provides insights into how this might be accomplished - that is how political institutions and rules can be designed in a manner which will direct the self-interest of political players to the furtherance of the general welfare.
According to Gwartney and Wagner - what would a political structure designed to bring the self-interest of political players into harmony with the betterment of the general citizens look like? There are three components:
1. The primary function of the central government would be to protect the life, liberty, and property of its citizens from both foreign and domestic aggressors - including government itself (includes enforcing contracts and property rights). If this function is not seen as primary - then other "functions" take over.
2. At the central government level, the primary beneficiaries of a program should be required to foot the bill. The term "general welfare" from the Constitution (U.S.) does not mean that the government enact programs that of the general nature that A and B enrich themselves at the expense of C (and possibly D and E). It is often used that way today -- for example, used for "universal healthcare" or "universal education."
3. The size of the supra-majority required for legislative action could reasonably decrease at lower levels of government. For example, a city council might operate with a simple majority vote - while requiring a three-fourths majority at the federal level. This would decrease the tendency of public sector activities to move toward the central government - where government is less competitive and more oppressive.
Unless we get the rules right -- we will continue to have special interest legislation, bureaucratic inefficiency, and the waste of rent-seeking. We will discuss other changes to the rules of the game as well.