Celette Sugg Skinner, Adam Buchanan, Matthew W. Kreuter, Cheryl Holt, Dawn Bucholtz and Tara Smith Strigo
This paper demonstrates that a message library – the computer‐tailored intervention component that contains all potential versions of tailored content – can be adapted for use in…
Abstract
This paper demonstrates that a message library – the computer‐tailored intervention component that contains all potential versions of tailored content – can be adapted for use in a new setting at reasonable cost and effort. A message library developed for one population was adapted to enable its use with a second population in a different geographic region. Concludes that adapting message libraries for new populations need not be a barrier to disseminating tailored interventions and designing message libraries with dissemination in mind creates tailored interventions that can be adapted for use with different populations.
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Andrew Farrant and Maria Pia Paganelli
Can we model politics as exclusively based on self-interest, leaving virtue aside? How much romance is there in the study of politics? We show that James Buchanan, a founder of…
Abstract
Can we model politics as exclusively based on self-interest, leaving virtue aside? How much romance is there in the study of politics? We show that James Buchanan, a founder of public choice and constitutional political economy, reintroduces a modicum of romance into politics, despite claiming that his work is the study of “politics without romance”: Buchanan’s model needs an ethical attitude to defend rules against rent-seeking.
We claim that Adam Smith, more than David Hume, should be considered one of the primary intellectual influences on Buchanan’s public choice and constitutional political economy. It is commonly believed that Hume assumes in politics every man ought to be considered a knave, making him an influence on Buchanan’s idea of politics without romance. Yet, it is Smith who, like Buchanan, describes rent-seeking and suggests that public virtues may be the remedy through which good rules maintaining liberty and prosperity can be generated and enforced. Smith, like Buchanan, rejects sole reliance on economic incentives: the study of politics needs some romance.
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This paper explores the relevance of Adam Smith’s invisible hand and the remainder of his legacy for public management. The paper’s central claim is that, by approaching Adam…
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This paper explores the relevance of Adam Smith’s invisible hand and the remainder of his legacy for public management. The paper’s central claim is that, by approaching Adam Smith and his legacy, public managers can assist themselves to do what they should do - examine their latent assumptions. The first of three challenges in approaching Adam Smith’s ideas is to get Smith right, because he has been widely misunderstood. The second is to question Smith’s account of conceptual space; it is desirable to go beyond him. The third challenge is to explore in specific terms the potential for public management of an understanding of Smith and his legacy
In Democracy in Chains, Nancy MacLean draws attention to the influence that James M. Buchanan’s work has had on the political economic discourse of the past half century. Buchanan…
Abstract
In Democracy in Chains, Nancy MacLean draws attention to the influence that James M. Buchanan’s work has had on the political economic discourse of the past half century. Buchanan and his collaborators in the Virginia Political Economy tradition have provided intellectual firepower for efforts to delegitimize democratically sanctioned policies aimed at alleviating the dysfunctional consequences of market activity. While MacLean’s account contains some well-documented inaccuracies, her characterization of Buchanan’s agenda is broadly accurate. This chapter assesses Buchanan’s economics in light of the themes raised by MacLean. His work, we shall argue, is a modern manifestation of what Marx termed “vulgar economy,” that is, ruling-class ideology posing as science.
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Nancy Maclean’s Democracy in Chains (2017) is an attempt to provide a narrative arc for the rise of free market ideas in political action during the second half of the twentieth…
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Nancy Maclean’s Democracy in Chains (2017) is an attempt to provide a narrative arc for the rise of free market ideas in political action during the second half of the twentieth century and into the first decades of the twenty-first century. The central character in her narrative is neither F.A. Hayek nor Milton Friedman, let alone Adam Smith or Ludwig von Mises, but James M. Buchanan, the 1986 Nobel Prize winner in economics. MacLean argues that rather than extol the virtues of the market economy as Hayek and Friedman did before him, Buchanan focused on the dysfunctions of politics. Due to a series of argumentative fallacies and failures that follow from her ideological blinders, I argue that MacLean’s attempt is a missed opportunity to seriously engage some very pressing issues in public choice and political economy and understand how James Buchanan attempted to resolve them in a democratic manner. As such, Democracy in Chains is not only a mischaracterization of Buchanan and his project but also a poignant lesson to us all about how ideological blinders can subvert even the sincerest effort to unearth truth in the social sciences and the humanities.
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I have been asked to explore how James Buchanan’s work on public finance and constitutional political economy might have emerged out of themes present in Frank Knight’s oeuvre…
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I have been asked to explore how James Buchanan’s work on public finance and constitutional political economy might have emerged out of themes present in Frank Knight’s oeuvre, especially his Risk Uncertainty, and Profit. Buchanan’s body of work has inspired the development of a style of political economy sometimes described as Virginia or Constitutional Political Economy to distinguish it from the Chicago Political Economy with which George Stigler is associated, and with Stigler and Buchanan both being students of Knight. While Buchanan, unlike Stigler, did not write his dissertation under Knight’s supervision, this is a minor distinction because Buchanan regarded Knight as his de facto supervisor even though Roy Blough was his de jure supervisor. The author explains how Knight’s scholarly oeuvre can in large measure be detected in Buchanan’s effort to fashion an alternative approach to public finance and to articulate the field of study now called constitutional political economy.
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I was invited by Sandra Peart and David Levy to take part in the Summer Institute held from 26 to 30 July 2004 at George Mason University. After some discussion I agreed to give…
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I was invited by Sandra Peart and David Levy to take part in the Summer Institute held from 26 to 30 July 2004 at George Mason University. After some discussion I agreed to give two lectures, on my project on the use of the concept of the invisible hand and on the theory of economic policy of Lionel Robbins and Friedrich Hayek, and to participate in a public “conversation” with James M. Buchanan before the same group. Subsequently, I accepted Buchanan's invitation to have a videotaped private interview by him.
There are more scholars teaching and actively engaged in research associated with the Austrian School of Economics now than at any other time in its history. However, there is…
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There are more scholars teaching and actively engaged in research associated with the Austrian School of Economics now than at any other time in its history. However, there is still something seriously wrong within the Austrian School and changes must be made both individually and collectively. In this piece, the author first discusses scientific progress with an emphasis on the individual behavior that is required to contribute to science, and the horizontal relationships that are required for the spread of ideas within a scientific community. Next, the author discusses the example of the Austrian school from 1950 to today in terms of these horizontal relationships within the profession and, in particular, in comparison with other mainline contributors during the same time period. The author then will address the multiplicity of horizontal relationships that might be explored as alternative discourse communities in the contemporary intellectual landscape. Lastly, the author concludes that the Austrian School of Economics must cultivate an explicit awareness of plausible, intrinsically interesting, and creative research agendas, and must therefore regard their work as a productive input into the ongoing research production of others within the broader community of economists and political economists.