Product Description: Kotaro Suzumura is one of the world’s foremost thinkers in social choice theory and welfare economics. Bringing together essays that have become classics in the field, Choice, Preferences, and Procedures examines foundational issues of normative economics and collective decision making...read more

In 1962, economists James M. Buchanan and Gordon Tullock published The Calculus of Consent, in which they developed the principles of public choice theory.  In the fifty years since its publication, the book has defined the field and set the standard for research and analysis.  To celebrate a half-century of scholarship in public choice, Dwight Lee has assembled distinguished academics from around the world to reflect on the influence of this monumental publication, and, more broadly, the legacy of its legendary authors.  Their essays cover a broad spectrum of topics and approaches, from the impact of public choice theory on foreign policy analysis to personal remembrances of learning from and collaborating with Buchanan and Tullock.  The result is a unique collection of insights that celebrate public choice and its visionary proponents, while considering its future directions. ​

Product Description: This book is an introduction to the logic and analytics of group choice. To understand how political institutions work, it is important to isolate what citizens - as individuals and as members of society - actually want. This book develops a means of "representing" the preferences of citizens so that institutions can be studied more carefully...read more

Product Description: Ironic Freedom asserts that freedom from governmental interference may make people vulnerable to other sources of coercion; these affects vary by gender, race, and class. Increasing negative freedoms may reinforce existing asymmetrical power relationships within society.

This book is devoted to applying the data, methods, and theories of contemporary social science to the question of how political outcomes in democratic societies determine the quality of life that citizens experience. Benjamin Radcliff seeks to provide an objective answer to the perennial debate between Left and Right over what public policies best contribute to human beings leading positive and rewarding lives. The book thus offers an empirical answer to this perpetual question, relying on the same canons of reason and evidence required of any other issue amenable to study through social-scientific means. The analysis focuses on the consequences of three specific political issues: the welfare state and the general size of government, labor organization, and state efforts to protect workers and consumers through economic regulation. The results indicate that in each instance, the program of the Left best contributes to citizens leading more satisfying lives, and, critically, that the benefits of greater happiness accrue to everyone in society, rich and poor alike.

Product Description: This volume suggests a capability perspective for evaluating welfare and educational policies. Capabilities are conceptualized as people's freedom to choose and conduct a life they have reason to value. The book's contributions analyze what social institutions may provide - in particular, in the field of education and welfare - in order to enhance capabilities in particular for most vulnerable people...read more

Product Description: Public choice theory sheds light on many aspects of legislation, regulation, and constitutional law and is critical to a sophisticated understanding of public policy. The editors of this landmark addition to the law and economics literature have organized the Handbook into four main areas of inquiry: foundations, constitutional law and democracy, administrative design and action, and specific statutory schemes...read more

Product Description: The mathematical theory of voting has intellectual roots extending back two centuries to the writings of Borda and Condorcet. Yet it has only been in the last forty years that general theorems have begun to emerge. With the publication of this volume, Norman Schofield brings the results together in a ,common framework...read more

This text provides students with [a] theoretical and conceptual framework for analyzing the design of a wide range of social welfare policies. [This book] illustrates theoretical points by offering examples from a cross-section of program areas includingincome maintenance, child welfare, model cities, day care, community action, and mental health. The authors show how social theories and individual versus collective value orientations influence policies. The [book] include[s] a broad overview of ... recent policy trends in the advanced welfare states related to eligibility, finance, delivery, and benefit designs.

Product Description: Since Aristotle, many different theories of distributive justice have been proposed, by philosophers as well as social scientists. The typical approach within social choice theory is to assess these theories in an axiomatic way - most of the time the reader is confronted with abstract reasoning and logical deductions...read more

Product Description: Updated in its 8th edition, The Politics of Congressional Elections has been brought completely up-to-date with the latest data from the National Election Study and the Federal Election Commission. It now includes coverage and analysis of the 2008 and 2010 elections and continues to make connections to broader themes and fundamental questions about representation and responsibility...read more

Product Description: The second volume of The Quest to Understand Human Affairs presents thirty-six previously unpublished manuscripts written by Vincent Ostrom, cofounder of the Workshop in Political Theory and Policy Analysis. The essays are divided among three parts: Constitutional Choice, Epistemic Choice, and The Quest for Understanding and the Future of Democratic Self-Governance...read more

Product Description: The marriage of neuroscience and the science of choice behaviour gave birth to neuroeconomics. Jan de Jong explores this new discipline, investigating the relationship between choice behaviour and brain activity, and the light that this sheds on our systems of reasoning.

Product Description: Endowed with the authority to enforce justice, government is a necessary prerequisite to human flourishing. Citizens rightfully bear the responsibility to contribute to the existence of just government through the rendering of taxes...read more

Product Description: In Majority Judgment, Michel Balinski and Rida Laraki argue that the traditional theory of social choice offers no acceptable solution to the problems of how to elect, to judge, or to rank. They find that the traditional model -- transforming the "preference lists" of individuals into a "preference list" of society -- is fundamentally flawed in both theory and practice...read more