Public Choice and Economics

Alan Hamlin argues that public choice is much more than a sub-discipline within economics, concerned with the application of economic method to political science; it can provide a powerful critique of the prevailing economic orthodoxy. The first part of this book is concerned with the standard approach to public choice and discusses the analysis of individual action within particular institutional roles - voter, bureaucrat etc. and the analysis of the operation on institutions themselves. This discussion provides the point of departure for the major argument contained in the second part of the book, which examines the methodology of public choice and casts it as an alternative to that of neo-classical economics. The relationship between this wider interpretation of public choice and various positions in ethics and political philosophy is also examined.