My recent contributions to public choice

Southern Economic Journal, July, 2008 by William Niskanen

All in all, I suggest my alternative model of voter and candidate behavior is a better explanation of the major recent changes in American elections than the standard model. One major change has been the increased attention of Republican candidates to energize their party base, rather than to reach out to a broader range of uncommitted voters. Another major change is the increased polarization of Congress, making it more difficult to govern. Apparently, President Bush does not understand that Karl Rove's insights about the politics of campaigning are a very poor guide to the politics of governing. To govern, one must work across party lines; otherwise, the president can be held hostage by any small group in his own party. As a consequence, there has been no serious debate on any one of Bush's major policy proposals in his second term.

My reading of this evidence is that the behavior of American voters and political candidates has led to a larger polarization of Congress than is consistent with the median voter theorem. Over time, this pattern of behavior will lead to an evolutionary reduction in the moderates in both parties and an increasing divergence of the issue positions of the two major parties. This will also make it more difficult for Congress to govern. More issues will be subject to partisan deadlock; more issues will be decided by near party-line votes; and a reduction of the moderates in both parties will make it more difficult to achieve the bipartisan consensus that is necessary for a major reform to be approved and to survive a change in the majority party. For different reasons, Congress is becoming more like the Italian parliament--it is more partisan; it has a reduced ability to address major reforms; and it has an increased centralization of political power in the executive. Not a happy thought.

6. A Tentative Personal Reflection on Public Choice

My analysis of each of the above four issues could have been done, and should have been done, years ago. The fact that these important issues were not addressed earlier does not reflect well on my professional subspecialty called public choice. There seems to have been little innovation in addressing the big issues of politics since the retirement or death of the half dozen or so founders of modern public choice and little attention to the major changes in political conditions. The journals focus on technique and are nearly inaccessible except to those who communicate by mathematics. My tentative answer to Jim Gwartney's question about the long-term effects of public choice is another question: How would anyone know?

William Niskanen * ([dagger])

* Cato Institute, 1000 Massachusetts Avenue, NW, Washington, DC 20001; E-mail wniskan@cato.org; corresponding author.

([dagger]) William A. Niskanen has been chairman of the Cato Institute since 1985, following service as a member and acting chairman of President Reagan's Council of Economic Advisers. Niskanen has served as director of economics at the Ford Motor Company, professor of economics at the University of California at Berkeley and Los Angeles, assistant director of the federal Office of Management and Budget, as a defense analyst at the Rand Corporation, the director of special studies in the Office of the Secretary of Defense, and the director of the Program Analysis division at the Institute for Defense Analyses. He has written on many public policy issues including corporate governance, defense, federal budget policy, regulation, Social Security, taxes, and trade. Niskanen holds a B.A. from Harvard and a Ph.D. in economics from the University of Chicago. This Association Lecture was delivered in New Orleans, Louisiana, on November 19, 2007.