Homo Economicus and Homo Politicus: An IntroductionAuthor(s): Geoffrey BrennanSource: Public Choice, Vol. 137, No. 3/4, Homo Economicus and Homo Politicus (Dec., 2008), pp.429-438Published by: SpringerStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/27698307 .

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Public Choice (2008) 137: 429-438

DOI 10.1007/sl 1127-008-9352-4

Homo economicus and homo politicus: an introduction

Geoffrey Brennan

Received: 9 May 2008 / Accepted: 23 July 2008 / Published online: 14 August 2008

? Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2008

Keywords Homo economicus Homo politicus Normative political theory

1 Provenance

In the Spring of 2005, a colloquium was held at Duke University, under the joint auspices of the Political Science Department and the Gerst Program in Political, Economic, and Hu

manistic Studies. The papers included in this Special Issue of Public Choice are revised

versions of a subset of those presented at the colloquium. The object of the meeting was

to bring together public choice scholars ("political theorists" of the rational actor stripe, as

we might put it) with practitioners of "Political Theory" as that term has been traditionally understood in Political Science circles?with the aim of jointly engaging with matters of

common concern.

It says something about the habits of contemporary academic discourse (and more specif

ically about the operation of Political Science as a discipline) that such "coming together" is

rare. One might have thought that, with the increased representation of public choice schol

ars in Political Science departments, and with Political Theory a long-standing core strand in

the Political Science professional curriculum, there would be plenty of engagement?even

if much of it turned out to be somewhat acrimonious and not especially profitable intellec

tually.

But that expectation is perhaps more reflective of experience in Economics departments than in their Political Science analogs. Political Science departments seem to me to be quite

G. Brennan (ISI) RSSS, ANU, Canberra, ACT 0200, Australia

e-mail : Geoffrey. Brennan @ anu. edu. au

G. Brennan

Political Science, Duke, Durham, NC 27708, USA

G. Brennan

Philosophy, UNC-Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, NC 27599, USA

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430 Public Choice (2008) 137: 429^138

unlike Economics departments in one critical respect: they operate internally pretty much

as a modus vivendi among the recognised "fields". The relation between sub-fields?say,

American politics; methods; political theory; comparative politics; international relations?

is a little like the relation between different disciplines in a School of Social Sciences. To be sure, tensions arise over resources; and certain "treaties" are entered into and rules of

collective decision-making emerge to deal with those tensions. But the idea that everyone in

Political Science is engaged in a common intellectual enterprise?one in which battles are

engaged on intellectual grounds (and victors proclaimed)?seems rather strained. In Eco

nomics departments, by contrast, arguments about resources and course-content and field

priorities within graduate programs, are routine: the assumption is that whether the marginal

post should be for "labour economics" or "public economics" or "applied micro" or what

ever, is a matter to be settled by reference to "what is important in the discipline": it is to be

engaged as a substantive issue in Economics.1

It is interesting to note in this connection that the introduction of 'rational choice' into the

mainstream Political Science graduate curriculum has been accommodated most commonly as part of the so-called "methods" stream?I suppose because both statistical methods and

formal models in the rational choice tradition are seen to have some vague association with

mathematics. My own view is that rational choice modelling and statistical technique have

relatively little to do with each other?and certainly much less, on the face of things, than

rational choice modelling has to do with political theory! What, after all, is "public choice

theory" if not political theory? Of course, common vocabulary can be a bar to mutual comprehension if people mean

different things by the same terms?and people pretty clearly do mean different things by the term "theory" here. (In order to distinguish what passes for Political Theory in Political

Science, and political theory as a more general concept, I shall henceforth use PT to signify

the former, and use lower case letters pt to refer to the latter.) In some ways, PT might

best be thought of as "History of Political Thought"?somewhat analogous to "History of

Economic Thought" (HET), but with the added distinction that much of "economic thought" even historically viewed, is theoretical and systematic in a way that "political thought" is not.

Moreover, the approach in PT is historical and textual/exegetical in a manner that at least

some of HET is not. There is still room in HET circles for "rational reconstruction" of the

arguments of earlier scholars. Think for example of Samuelson on the classical model, or

a host of economic demographers on Malthus. The closest analogues on the politics side

are perhaps rational reconstructions of Hobbes (as in the work of Jean Hampton 1986) or

contemporary re-presentations of the political arguments of say Marx or Tocqueville (as

in Elster 1985, 1993, Chap. 3) but these tend to emerge more from political philosophy in

Philosophy departments than from PT.

This is not to deny that status quo quasi-entitlements do not carry some weight in Economics contexts as

well?but one would expect to have to make intellectual and disciplinary arguments, and one would expect those arguments to carry real weight. The point is often made that Economics as a discipline is more to

be distinguished by its "way of thinking" than its subject-matter, whereas Political Science is characterized

entirely by its subject matter. By some lights, it is doubtful whether Political Science is really a "discipline" at all?that it is just too methodologically heterogeneous to merit that categorization. If one approaches the

notion of what makes a discipline from the perspective of the Economics case, one can see the force of

such a charge?though by criteria like consensus over rankings of journals and departments, it seems to me

that Political Science does indeed qualify. Moreover, I am not entirely sure what is supposed to be at stake

in being a "real discipline". The relevant point is just that Economics and Political Science are different, and that securing genuine engagement between different "fields" in Political Science is something of an

accomplishment.

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Public Choice (2008) 137: 429^38 431

In short, the ambition to find common ground on which public choice scholars and "polit

ical theorists" of a more traditional kind might have profitable exchange is not a trivial one:

we start from very different conceptions of what counts as theory?even of what counts as

worthwhile scholarship?and from rather different disciplinary presuppositions as to how

differences in approach can most profitably be engaged and resolved.

For all that, it seems implausible that scholars in the same disciplinary department who

self-describe as "theorists" would have nothing at all of intellectual interest to say to one

another. Public Choice scholars might well ape the prevailing attitudes of Economics de

partments in thinking that nothing of much interest has been done more than five years

ago?let alone fifty, or a thousand or two. But, standing back a little, it seems unlikely that

there is nothing in Plato, Aristotle, Cicero, Macchiavelli, Hobbes, Locke, Hume, Smith,

Bentham, Mill, Edgeworth, Kant or even Rawls, that is of the slightest interest or relevance

to rational choice theory, broadly construed. At the very least, the hypothesis that these 'an

cient' writers said nothing of interest is one that should not be accepted just on the basis of

prejudice!

2 The topic: "The nature of man"

The scope for profitable exchange would seem to be especially marked in relation to the

particular topic which the Duke Gerst conference chose to address?namely, the model of

agent motivation that is (most) appropriate for political analysis. After all, economists are

not psychologists. Most of us accept that homo economicus is an abstraction, that it is a use

ful abstraction for certain purposes, and that there is a general methodological presumption

that the same model of agent motivation ought to apply across market and political settings.

As Buchanan (1984/1999)2 puts the latter point: "The burden of proof rests with those who

suggest wholly different models of man apply in the political and economic realms of behav

ior". Political scientists might well, of course, dispute the latter claim. And they would be

right to be suspicious of "onus of proof" claims, since lots of contested issues are likely to

be settled by where we take the onus of proof to lie!

However, even if we accept the Buchanan stricture, there are lots of reasons?many of

them more or less recognized in mainstream public choice?why market and political be

havior might be different, in a manner entirely predictable from a rational actor point of

view. So, for example, agents in their political roles will be predictably less well-informed

about the effect of alternative policies on their interests than they would be about the anal

ogous properties of alternative market options.3 Or, as Buchanan has argued more recently4 much voting is "strategic" in a manner that market purchase is not. Or one might observe

that the options for choice in political contexts include the well-being of other citizens, so

that any altruistic inclinations that individuals might have (or equally any malicious incli

nations), which lie relatively dormant in market settings, will receive predictably greater

2 All references to Buchanan articles published before 1999 in what follows will be both to the original versions and to the relevant volumes of the Buchanan Collected Works, published by Liberty Fund. This is

because, though it is probably easier to locate the papers in the Collected Works versions, the dating of the

originals allows us to locate the ideas temporally. References to Buchanan's books will be to the original versions.

3In other words, I take it that Downsian 'rational ignorance' is a recognised part of the mainstream public choice paradigm (Downs 1957).

4In Buchanan and Yoon (2006) say. Arguably, these 'strategic' voting issues are a reformulation of claims

earlier investigated for example by Gibbard (1973) and Satterthwaite (1975).

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432 Public Choice (2008) 137: 429-438

expression in the electoral setting. In fact, to refer to the 'ancient history' of public choice?

the mid-1950s?Buchanan (1954) had already isolated a variety of ways in which political and market choices might be expected to differ, simply on the basis of rational choice logic

and more or less accepting his own methodological strictures as to onus of proof.

Further, the general point that there might be feedback effects between institutions and

motivations has a respectable history within economics. One does not have to appeal to

Marxian notions of 'false consciousness' here. Adam Smith, as a 'douce commerce' theorist,

believed that commercial society bred a softness of manners and an attentiveness to the

interests of others that was distinctive of the market system. Somewhere Smith remarks that

the Dutch are more trustworthy than the English, and the English more trustworthy than the

Scots, and that this fact is attributable to the better development of the market in Holland

than in England and in England than in Scotland. If this is so, then it is not implausible that

similar feedback effects might operate within democratic political institutions.

Furthermore, the use of homo economicus as a general model of motivation in politics

has been one of the more controversial aspects of the public choice approach.5 So, two

questions: to what extent is this particular model a core piece of the whole public choice

enterprise? And are all aspects of the homo economicus construction equally central? After

all, homo economicus sweeps up a variety of distinguishable properties. It is possible to

assume that agents are 'rational', without assuming that they are egoistic; and possible to

assume that they are egoistic, without assuming that they maximize material wealth.6

My own view is that rationality is much closer to the "Lakatosian core" of the economic

approach than egoism is. By this I mean that the profession would require less in the way of

empirical evidence to give up on egoism than to give up on rationality?which is of course

not to deny that something like predominant egoism is the benchmark case against which

relevant evidence would have to be arrayed. But in the political setting, for example, we can

(and routinely do) attribute to political agents a predominant desire to be elected without

feeling any necessary compulsion to trace that desire back to "wealth maximization". Actu

ally, the assumption that candidates seek to maximize their chances of electoral success can

accommodate a wide range of underlying 'reasons'?that they enjoy the power for its own

sake; that successful politicians are famous and they want to be famous; that success enables

them to "do good"; as well as that success maximizes their lifetime incomes (a claim that is,

on its face, dubious for lots of cases).

And there are at least some important results in mainstream public choice that do not

depend on particular motivations. So, for example, the median voter theorem works for

preferences that have the right single-peaked structure whether those preferences are in line

with individual interests or not. Similarly, global cycling will emerge for voters that vote

their moral values provided the values admit more than one "dimension" and Plott conditions

don't apply. Schelling (1978) makes the point that some models of social interaction have

predictable results more or less whatever the agents' motivations?and appeals to an analogy

with the game of "musical chairs" to make his point: someone will always be excluded

at every round! And his famous "empty front rows" and "tipping" models are designed,

5See Kelman (1988) for an especially blistering assault. Green and Shapiro (1994) are not much less re

strained.

6An egoistic agent might for example seek to maximize the esteem she enjoys (Smith 1759/1979; Brennan

and Pettit 2004) with the result that she might be led to conform to prevailing norms to avoid the general

contempt that she would otherwise sustain. In so doing, she acts essentially egoistically: it is her own esteem

she cares about?not the esteem of others. But she will be led to act in accordance with the values of others,

and not exclusively in her material advantage, in all cases where material advantage and esteem are in conflict.

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Public Choice (2008) 137: 429-438 433

I take it, to show that lots of social outcomes are consistent with a wide variety of specific

preferences.7 If public choice results are robust to a fair range of motivational assumptions, then this is

a good reason to adopt a less restrictive 'model' than homo economicus. It is a good method

ological principle that one should not make a strong assumption when a weaker (and/or less

controversial) one will do the same work. Equally, however, if this is so, then questions

about homo economicus and homo politicus and the relation between them lose a fair bit of

their point! Motivational details become second-order matters?at least in some important arenas. To put the point slightly differently, Buchanan (1969/1999) makes a useful distinc

tion between the 'logic' and the 'science' of choice?the former requiring only the abstract

structure of rationality, the latter requiring a workably detailed specification of the argu

ments in the utility function. Some results in public choice can be derived within a 'logic' of

choice?and for these at least all the empirical results can show (however specified) is that

"water runs downhill".8

It could be of course that the model of homo politicus that emerges from many scholars

in the history of political thought abandons not just egoism but also rationality. And certain

moves within the broad public choice tradition seem quite hospitable to this more radical

move as well. So, for example, the original rational ignorance model suggests why voters

will have systematically erroneous (and in principle correctible) beliefs. The "expressive

voting" account9 explains why it can be rational for voters to vote for policies that they

recognize are not in their interests. Bryan Caplan (2007) carries the argument further to

claim "rational irrationality".10 Nevertheless, all of these accounts of electoral behavior pre sume that agents are rational at some level. It is precisely the logic of rationality that drives

the divergence between "true preference" and "electoral preference" in all three cases.

Conceivably, however, the models of motivation that characterize homo politicus lie be

yond even this second-order appeal to rationality. After all, the 'behavioral' turn within

more or less mainstream economics has questioned much that even quite recently passed for

orthodoxy. Stimulated by various experimental findings, some of them from social psychol

ogy (as well as from the burgeoning experimental economics) literature, skepticism about

rationality in any of its familiar forms has become increasingly common. In that kind of

environment, seeking hypotheses about behavioral matters by raiding the insights of a long list of students of politics over the last two thousand years might well prove quite useful.

3 Homo, but which homo?

There are two features of the chosen topic that are worth underlining. The first is a pre

sumptive commitment to methodological individualism. The focus on alternative models

7So specifically, residential segregation is consistent with only very weak 'type' preferences (say, for having a majority of one's own kind) (Schelling 1969).

?This is a well-known deflationary remark of Buchanan's in relation to much empirical work!

9With which I am myself associated. See Brennan and Lomasky (1993) for example.

10It is perhaps worth noting that the expressive voting thesis suggests why political preferences and market

preferences are likely to diverge?but holds that individuals' political preferences are no less 'rational' in the sense that they evince the properties of continuity, transitivity and convexity. But whereas market preferences have some claim to reflect the agent's true preferences in appropriately idealized cases, the 'revealed prefer ence' logic breaks down in the electoral case. Expressive preferences have the right structural properties for

rationality, but not the critical connection to the agent's desires that is taken as a hallmark of rationality in the economist's scheme.

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434 Public Choice (2008) 137: 429^38

of 'human nature' involves at least one important level of agreement?that human agency

is a central feature of proper political explanation. It is important to note two possibilities

that are implicitly rejected here. One is the notion that political outcomes can be adequately

explained in terms of structural features of the social order. Schelling's 'musical chairs'

analogy provides one example of a simple structural model: it doesn't matter what moti

vates the players, it is the simple arithmetic of the diminishing number of chairs that drives

the outcome (or at least that aspect of the outcome that deals with numbers of players).11 The other possibility implicitly ruled out is the idea of collective agency?the attribution of

psychological properties to entities other than individuals. Homo politicus is a generaliza

tion about individuals in their political roles: it does not involve an account of politics that

treats nations or classes or interest groups or some other collective entity as primary actors.

On both counts, a homo politicus theorist makes common ground with the public choice

theorist.

That said, there is a question that the common commitment to an individualist method

disguises. And that is: which individual agents in which roles in political processes are we

talking about? Begin with the simplest median voter model of electoral competition. The

results here are driven more or less entirely by the actions of individual voters: candidates?

at least the ones that seek to win?operate more or less as ciphers for voter interests. The

basic model ascribes to no particular actors in the model any role greater than that of atom

istic buyers and sellers in a well-functioning market. When the uni-dimensional case is re

placed with the multi-dimensional and global cycling looms, the picture potentially changes.

At least in principle, the large number case shifts to a very small number case?the en

tire process is potentially driven by a single 'agenda setter' and political outcomes reflect

the very specific tastes/values/beliefs/preferences of that particular individual. There is no

change of course in the general attribution of predominant egoism to all players?whether

voters or political agents?and the general point of the cycling picture is presumably to un

derline the fact that majority rule (and indeed anything less than unanimity) ultimately fails to constrain at all. In this case, explaining political outcomes involves no more and no less

than appealing to the very particular utility function of the agenda setter. Politics ceases to

be a 'large number' issue and becomes effectively a very small number game!

Suppose, instead of conceptualizing politics as either totally constraining?in which case

attention is fixed on the vast number of individual voters, somehow aggregated?or as to

tally ??^constraining?in which case only the motivations of the political agents matters, we

inhabit the middle ground. There still remains a question as to whose actions we are primar

ily trying to explain?large numbers of individual voters; or small numbers of individual

'agents'. In my experience, public choice scholars are somewhat inconsistent on these is

sues. At the scholarly level, we tend to use something like median-voter models (because

these are the only ones that have stable equilibria and hence that connect outcomes to voter

preferences); but in our capacity as individual citizen-voters, we often hold very strong views

about the worthiness or otherwise of particular parties/candidates (matters that if the models

are right should be asymptotically irrelevant). To the extent that political agents do exercise

genuine discretion, then explaining specific political outcomes must appeal to questions of

detail about the character of those political agents.

Schelling's 'tipping models' do not I think fit this category. The point in those models is that a range of

agent motivations is consistent with the same outcome: but in each case, the outcome will be produced by the interactions between individual players all of whom have some specific motivation that have a common

feature (a preference not to be in the minority).

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Public Choice (2008) 137: 429^138 435

And here there is scope for some finer grained comment. The public choice approach is

disposed to think of political processes as 'incentive devices' moderating the behavior of

political agents in the direction of citizen-voter preferences (or not, as the case may be). But

suppose that instead we think of those processes as selection mechanisms?choosing from

among the set of persons that present themselves as candidates the one(s) who is (are) to

"represent" them. Then it is natural to ask whether the selection mechanisms in place are

likely to be entirely random over candidate characteristics. On this view, the natural hetero

geneity of individuals becomes a matter of interest. So does the 'endogenous' heterogeneity to which the selection processes give rise. It may well be, as Adam Smith notes in relation

to the street porter and the philosopher, that most observed differences (in Smith's case,

in intellectual ability and curiosity) are a product of endogenous specialization rather than

genetically endowed talent?but there may still be a division of labor between those who

equip themselves for "public life" and those who seek careers as butchers, bakers and brew

ers (and philosophers and street porters). The question becomes: what distinctive attributes

are possessed by those who are likely to be 'successful' as political candidates? There is

both a demand-side and a supply-side aspect to this question. On the supply-side, there is an

issue about which persons voters are likely to find attractive or compelling when deciding who to support politically. On the demand-side, there are issues about who is likely to want

to acquire the skills/attributes that are relevant. Not everyone wants to be a politician, even

if one had or could develop the relevant qualities !

So, we might surmise, demand-side considerations will select for those who have a spe

cial liking for public attention, who have strong views about "doing good" and/or who enjoy the exercise of power over others.12 These are the currencies of reward that political agency

tends to offer; and candidates can be expected to self-select on this basis. On the supply

side, the issue of voting behavior re-appears. If voters vote predominantly on the basis of

pecuniary self-interest, they will vote for candidates who they believe will reliably protect and favor those interests. Presumably what is at stake here is a mixture of competence and

trustworthiness.13 But if instrumental voting is undermined by non-decisiveness (as variants

of the rational ignorance/expressive voting accounts insist), then other characteristics come

into play: rhetorical effectiveness; good looks; charm; 'charisma'; plausibility; perceived

public-spiritedness?and so on. These are characteristics that can be cultivated; some peo

ple are more extensively genetically endowed with them than are others. In any event, these

are features that will be selected for?along with the capacity to raise the funds necessary to

wage the campaign in an effective way.

l2In most democratic systems, economic rewards for politicians are not all that high. Political constraints seem to keep them so. Voters would, it seems, prefer to have candidates in whom the pecuniary motive is not

well-developed! That is why it is always a tricky business for politicians to vote themselves salary increases:

given the weight of the decisions politicians are called on to make, they seem poorly paid in comparison with, say, their counterparts in the commercial sector. This fact encourages politicians to take their pecuniary rewards in forms that are relatively inconspicuous (such as extremely generous pension entitlements). Of

course, in the absence of effective monitoring and publicity, low salaries might also encourage corruption? so depending on the institutional framework, politics may (like used car salesmanship, by repute) also select for those with relatively few scruples! But of course the arrangements also encourage people to become

politicians who prefer the rewards that politics does offer?fame, being "in charge", lording it over others,

"doing good", and so on.

13Especially trustworthiness in cases where term limits are in place?because then the issue of future re

election is not a discipline (either at all, if backward induction applies, or at least as the end-term draws near).

Actually, if backward induction operates, then term limits might have no effect at all. Every candidate will have a predicted 'last period' where the likelihood of continuation is too low to prevent 'defection'.

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436 Public Choice (2008) 137: 429-438

And if one has the kinds of ambitions that logic suggests will be typical among the set of candidates, then a capacity to 'rise' within the party will also be an important supply

side consideration. Perceived ideological purity, 'good judgment' on party-relevant matters,

generosity in supplying support to party colleagues and so on, will presumably play a role

at this level.

All these considerations do not perhaps get as much consideration as they might in pub

lic choice circles but they are of the essence in much political theory. Macchiavelli's advice

to the Prince as to how to exercise and maintain power; Hobbes' account of the love of

glory as a major force among political aspirants; Hume on the centrality of popular opinion

(or for that matter his History of England)', Montesquieu on the operation of monarchies

and republics?all embody accounts of political process in which the attributes of political 'leaders' play a central role. Of course, in all such cases, there are in play important institu

tional features that are significantly different from those of our own time. And institutional

details can make a big difference. But my point here is that traditional political theory pays

rather more attention to political agents and their attributes than public choice theory does?

and there may be interesting systematic features of politic processes to be derived from that

focus.

More generally, I suppose, my point is that which models of agent motivation are appro

priate or most useful is not independent of what the models are to be used to explain. In

large number direct democracy settings, it is proper to seek a model of 'average' motivation

that can be ascribed to voters at large?just as in models of markets with large numbers

of buyers and sellers, we need a model of the average transactor. In representative democ

racy, where the 'representatives' in question exercise a considerable amount of discretionary

power, a broad, generally descriptive model of motivation may be much less useful in ex

plaining or predicting political outcomes. In this latter respect, public choice theorists may

have something to learn from PT.

4 The rest is prologue

Being, as I am, strongly of the view that authors should be allowed to speak for themselves,

I do not intend to offer gratuitous comments on the papers in this introduction. However,

I do want to defend briefly the order in which the papers appear?and offer a little final

encouragement to the reader.

The collection starts with the Munger paper, not because he is now an editor of Public

Choice and my department head for a piece of a piece of the year (though these are not

reasons to be sniffed at), but because his is the one that lies closest to what most readers

of this journal would be identify as the "public choice" spirit. After laying out the general normative framework within which he sees public choice as operating, he concludes with an

account of an experiment that is at once amusing and instructive, and will probably serve to

support conventional public choice prejudices.

The Hardin paper that follows offers support for the basic similarity between homo eco

nomicus and homo politicus?again much in the spirit of mainstream public choice. In con

ceptualizing the relationship in terms of different structures of interaction, Hardin sees him

self to be following David Hume (from whom economists' understanding of rationality and

certain other basic concepts largely derive). It is worth noting, in the light of the foregoing discussion, that Hardin sees the large normative questions in politics?particularly insti

tutional design issues?as essentially large number problems governed by 'spontaneous'

processes in which individual morality can play at best a minor role. Institutions emerge

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Public Choice (2008) 137: 429-438 437

from individual interactions but they cannot be properly conceived as objects of choice?and

in that sense, details of individual motivations, and particularly the fine-grained distinctions

between homo economicus and homo politicus, are really second-order concerns.

Buchanan's short essay focuses less on different models of man?or contexts in which

George Aislie's various homunculi might have a predominant role?and more on the distinc

tion between community and individual interest, and how Kant's generality principle might

moderate the tension between community and individual interest. In doing so, he echoes in

a slightly different voice sentiments expressed in his 1998 book with Roger Congleton.

My own paper is an attempt to restate the expressive account of voting, which I favor,

and to defend it against certain misinterpretations and certain criticisms. As I see it, the

expressive account does operate as a kind of half-way house between homo economicus

and the richer (and often more normatively charged) accounts of political motivations that

inhabit PT.

The Stimson/Milgate and Strong papers are more representative of the "Political The

ory" spirit of enquiry. And they will, accordingly, demand a certain, determined spirit of

intellectual generosity from the traditional Public Choice readership. The Stimson/Milgate

paper focuses on the relationship between political and economic man, not as an issue in

abstract theorizing, but rather as the relationship has been understood historically through

the eyes of contemporary commentators. The four periods under consideration?ancient,

mercantilist, classical and neo-classical?are, to be sure, somewhat biased towards what

economists would be inclined to regard as the distant past. But the authors make an in

teresting case for the proposition that there is considerable continuity with modern public

choice/constitutional economics, and that public choice scholarship exhibits intellectual dis

positions born largely in the period of classical "separation" of the political from the eco

nomic.

The title of the Strong paper reflects the specific topic assigned by the conference orga

nizers. And, quite properly, he spends a considerable amount of his paper wrestling with

what exactly it might mean to compare the "encompassingness" of the political and the

economic. It is interesting that he conceptualizes the distinction by appeal to paradigmatic

conversations and by reference to whom one "speaks for"?self (economic) or others (po

litical). Although rational choice economists may find it a challenging thought that politics is characteristically associated with "an enlargement of the sensibilities", it is worth noting that there is some common ground here with the issue raised in Buchanan's paper on the

relation between community and individual.

We have chosen to place Ruth Grant's interesting paper last, partly because it strikes us

as having the most 'synoptic' quality of all the papers. Using Hirschman's contrast between

the "passions and the interests" as a trope, she issues a challenge to applications of the homo

economicus method not just in politics but also in market settings. Like other critics of

homo economicus, Grant sees the problem less in terms of an excessive similarity in models

of political and economic behavior, and more in terms of the impoverished psychology that

economists typically use across the board.

As already remarked, not all these papers will strike public choice readers as familiar

fare?perhaps not even as "fare" at all. But that is, in one way, their point. As Thomas Jef

ferson remarks in a not unfamiliar document, there is a general obligation to show "a decent

respect for the opinions of mankind". Public choice has plenty of critics?and it is good

to develop the habit of respecting their opinions and engaging with, rather than dismissing,

them.

4y Springer

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438 Public Choice (2008) 137: 429^38

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