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Government Failure: A Primer in Public Choice
When market forces fail us, what are we to do? Who will step in to protect the public interest? The government, right? Wrong. The romantic view of bureaucrats coming to the rescue confuses the true relationship between economics and politics. Politicians often cite "market failure" as justification for meddling with the economy, but a group of leading scholars show the shortcomings of this view. In Government Failure, these scholars explain the school of study known as "public choice," which uses the tools of economics to understand and evaluate government activity.
Gordon Tullock, one of the founders of public choice, explains how government "cures" often cause more harm than good. Tullock provides an engaging overview of public choice and discusses how interest groups seek favors from government at enormous costs to society. Displaying the steely realism that has marked public choice, Tullock shows the political world as it is, rather than as it should be. Gordon Brady scrutinizes American public policy, looking closely at international trade, efforts at regulating technology, and environmental policy. At every turn Brady points out the ways in which interest groups have manipulated the government to advance their own agendas. Arthur Seldon, a seminal scholar in public choice, provides a comparative perspective from Great Britain. He examines how government interventions in the British economy have led to inefficiency and warns about the political centralization promised by the European Community.
Government Failure heralds a new approach to the study of politics and public policy. This book enlightens readers with the basic concepts of public choice in an unusually accessible way to show the folly of excessive faith in the state.
Gordon Tullock, one of the founders of public choice, explains how government "cures" often cause more harm than good. Tullock provides an engaging overview of public choice and discusses how interest groups seek favors from government at enormous costs to society. Displaying the steely realism that has marked public choice, Tullock shows the political world as it is, rather than as it should be. Gordon Brady scrutinizes American public policy, looking closely at international trade, efforts at regulating technology, and environmental policy. At every turn Brady points out the ways in which interest groups have manipulated the government to advance their own agendas. Arthur Seldon, a seminal scholar in public choice, provides a comparative perspective from Great Britain. He examines how government interventions in the British economy have led to inefficiency and warns about the political centralization promised by the European Community.
Government Failure heralds a new approach to the study of politics and public policy. This book enlightens readers with the basic concepts of public choice in an unusually accessible way to show the folly of excessive faith in the state.
185 pages, Paperback
First published May 1, 2002
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
August 20, 2013
Public Choice is a fancy economic expression that used to go by the name common sense or by ‘healthy skepticism’ earlier. But bringing it into formal theory has been a commendable accomplishment. Tullock’s essays in the first part are indeed a good primer as the book’s title claims. But after that the second and third authors rapidly takes it from healthy skepticism to an almost neurotic revulsion of government, even going so far as to predict the coming anarchy.
The intro might turn you off before you can even start but that is because it is written by Seldon, he won't make a reappearance till part 3: don't miss Tullock. By the end this primer has turned into a thoroughly depressing book, probably the worst of the year yet. Now I have to pick up a public choice text-book to confirm if the authors were not oversimplifying in their zeal.
December 3, 2012
Didn't know a lot about the subject, so I got this as a basic overview. However, it was *so* basic that there was really nothing in it i hadn't already learned from reading wiki pages and marginalrevolution.com
July 6, 2014
Interesting Quotes:
"[T]he U.S. Congress has voted for itself large staffs, offices conveniently located in their home district, franking privileges (free postage), and so on. The value of these elaborate privileges to members of Congress is probably five or six times the campaign contributions they receive. To a large extent these prerequisites of office are used to campaign for reelection and provide powerful protection for incumbents. FN 3"
FN 3: "The case may very well be that Congress is willing to restrict campaign contributions because it has these privileges. It is true that incumbents normally get larger contributions than their challengers. The opponents at least get some money, but they do not have access to the perquisites of the incumbent."
-Gordon Tullock, Government Failure: a Primer in Public Choice
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"No doubt exists that rent seeking in general leads to serious inefficiencies in this direct sense, but its indirect damage is even worse. Drawing the bulk of intelligent and energetic people in society into activity that has no social product, or may have a negative social product, is more important in explaining the stagnation of these societies than the direct social cost of the rent seeking."
-Gordon Tullock, Government Failure: a Primer in Public Choice
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"A much more radical conclusion . . . that, so far as I know, is shared by only a very few students of public choice [is]: that government employees or people who draw the bulk of their income from government by other means should be deprived of the vote . . . It is another example of the opening up of alternatives for investigation and the presentation of new conceivable policy options characteristic of public choice, rather than a policy that all its students favor."
-Gordon Tullock, Government Failure: a Primer in Public Choice
-----------------------------------------------
"In order to win approval [from the EPA], new plants and products must endure lengthy regulatory proceedings, so the resulting uncertainty and delay discourage new investment and innovation by existing firms and provoke costly litigation . . . The all-or-nothing regulation of pollutants has adverse effects: if firms were not required to use specific pieces of equipment, they might find more effective means of control that would reduce nonregulated but potentially dangerous pollutants."
-Arthur Seldon, Government Failure: a Primer in Public Choice
"[T]he U.S. Congress has voted for itself large staffs, offices conveniently located in their home district, franking privileges (free postage), and so on. The value of these elaborate privileges to members of Congress is probably five or six times the campaign contributions they receive. To a large extent these prerequisites of office are used to campaign for reelection and provide powerful protection for incumbents. FN 3"
FN 3: "The case may very well be that Congress is willing to restrict campaign contributions because it has these privileges. It is true that incumbents normally get larger contributions than their challengers. The opponents at least get some money, but they do not have access to the perquisites of the incumbent."
-Gordon Tullock, Government Failure: a Primer in Public Choice
----------------------------------------
"No doubt exists that rent seeking in general leads to serious inefficiencies in this direct sense, but its indirect damage is even worse. Drawing the bulk of intelligent and energetic people in society into activity that has no social product, or may have a negative social product, is more important in explaining the stagnation of these societies than the direct social cost of the rent seeking."
-Gordon Tullock, Government Failure: a Primer in Public Choice
----------------------------------------
"A much more radical conclusion . . . that, so far as I know, is shared by only a very few students of public choice [is]: that government employees or people who draw the bulk of their income from government by other means should be deprived of the vote . . . It is another example of the opening up of alternatives for investigation and the presentation of new conceivable policy options characteristic of public choice, rather than a policy that all its students favor."
-Gordon Tullock, Government Failure: a Primer in Public Choice
-----------------------------------------------
"In order to win approval [from the EPA], new plants and products must endure lengthy regulatory proceedings, so the resulting uncertainty and delay discourage new investment and innovation by existing firms and provoke costly litigation . . . The all-or-nothing regulation of pollutants has adverse effects: if firms were not required to use specific pieces of equipment, they might find more effective means of control that would reduce nonregulated but potentially dangerous pollutants."
-Arthur Seldon, Government Failure: a Primer in Public Choice
May 16, 2018
Fairly redundant. Much of it is either summed up by common sense economics or woefully narrow minded... could use a sociological perspective to give it more real-world applicability.
May 24, 2025
I hate books where you gain an intimate knowledge of the author on a personal level, and you will gain a nauseatingly-in-depth understanding of Gordon by even the third chapter. I know where he lives, where he's studied, where he works, what his opinions are on every topic and concept he covers, and what his personal political opinions are. I don't think that's appropriate for anything outside of an editorial in the newspaper. It's one thing to "get to know" an author, and it's one thing for an author's bias to influence their attempt at an objective presentation of a topic, but it's like there was no attempt to be anything but subjective in this.
This does affect the quality of the book. I was required to read this for my economics class in public choice, and a lot of public choice texts are neurotically cynical (as Gordon actually points out in I think chapter one or two), but I found myself just gaining a superficial, sometimes misguided introduction to most issues presented.
Sometimes the author flips back and forth between what you should know vs. what he thinks, that I don't know where one ends and the other begins - sometimes the entire section is just his personal thoughts - sometimes the example or analogy used to explain a concept can only really be understood if you know what Gordon thinks of the topic - and sometimes I don't even know what role opinions are supposed to play in the examples.
For example, in chapter 2, British political parties are used to explain voting paradoxes. Gordon writes "what you think of this analysis will depend on your view of the Liberal Democrats," but I don't follow British politics, so I have no view, and the mathematical concept of voting paradoxes really should not require any political stance or personal rating in order to be understood. And, when only one sentence ("The only party that has a reasonably strong chance of winning the support of the majority of the populace in a set of two-party contests is reduced to extreme weakness by the voting method used.") is vague (what "extreme weakness" do the Liberals hold, being viewed as the "lesser evil" by both of its opponents, and therefore more likely to win? what voting method would make them weak? didn't we just establish that their median preference makes them more likely to win regardless of order, eliminating the paradox somewhat?) - it really is not conducive to learning.
And finally, this is just my own complaining, but I wish more time was taken to evaluate possible solutions to government failure. Free markets were seen as infallible until they failed, and government was the proposed solution to market failure. Government was in theory infallible in a democracy until we see now its failures, and yet there isn't really any analysis as to why these things fail. You just have to follow the opinion that, to a certain extent, humans are all selfish and voters all uninformed, and so any regulation or system of morals are destined to fail. It just reads as a pessimist's ramblings. Granted, this is virtually every book I've read on public choice, but an entire book filled with observations and nothing beyond personal evaluations of your observations... well, sucks. It's like a textbook on cancer, but there's nothing about radiation, chemotherapy, immunotherapy, or surgery. Just the author bitching about how much cancer sucks, how it will always happen no matter what, and oh whether he thinks liver or lung cancer is worse.
This is just a primer, granted, so it's only really supposed to introduce you to government *failure* and not possible remedies. But it's not a great primer, nor is it engaging or enjoyable to read, so it's just disappointing all around.
This does affect the quality of the book. I was required to read this for my economics class in public choice, and a lot of public choice texts are neurotically cynical (as Gordon actually points out in I think chapter one or two), but I found myself just gaining a superficial, sometimes misguided introduction to most issues presented.
Sometimes the author flips back and forth between what you should know vs. what he thinks, that I don't know where one ends and the other begins - sometimes the entire section is just his personal thoughts - sometimes the example or analogy used to explain a concept can only really be understood if you know what Gordon thinks of the topic - and sometimes I don't even know what role opinions are supposed to play in the examples.
For example, in chapter 2, British political parties are used to explain voting paradoxes. Gordon writes "what you think of this analysis will depend on your view of the Liberal Democrats," but I don't follow British politics, so I have no view, and the mathematical concept of voting paradoxes really should not require any political stance or personal rating in order to be understood. And, when only one sentence ("The only party that has a reasonably strong chance of winning the support of the majority of the populace in a set of two-party contests is reduced to extreme weakness by the voting method used.") is vague (what "extreme weakness" do the Liberals hold, being viewed as the "lesser evil" by both of its opponents, and therefore more likely to win? what voting method would make them weak? didn't we just establish that their median preference makes them more likely to win regardless of order, eliminating the paradox somewhat?) - it really is not conducive to learning.
And finally, this is just my own complaining, but I wish more time was taken to evaluate possible solutions to government failure. Free markets were seen as infallible until they failed, and government was the proposed solution to market failure. Government was in theory infallible in a democracy until we see now its failures, and yet there isn't really any analysis as to why these things fail. You just have to follow the opinion that, to a certain extent, humans are all selfish and voters all uninformed, and so any regulation or system of morals are destined to fail. It just reads as a pessimist's ramblings. Granted, this is virtually every book I've read on public choice, but an entire book filled with observations and nothing beyond personal evaluations of your observations... well, sucks. It's like a textbook on cancer, but there's nothing about radiation, chemotherapy, immunotherapy, or surgery. Just the author bitching about how much cancer sucks, how it will always happen no matter what, and oh whether he thinks liver or lung cancer is worse.
This is just a primer, granted, so it's only really supposed to introduce you to government *failure* and not possible remedies. But it's not a great primer, nor is it engaging or enjoyable to read, so it's just disappointing all around.
July 31, 2020
Ottimo saggio sulla Public Choice, la teoria della scelta delle persone nell'ambito del bene pubblico.
E' suddiviso in tre sezioni, la prima generale/teorica, le altre due relative alla public choice applicata alle scelte politiche ed economiche in USA e UK.
Per questo la lettura tende a perdere un po' di interesse, per quanto comunque di alto livello.
Il libro è comunque un brutto colpo alla nostra fiducia nello Stato e nella Politica, ma è innegabile che sia pertinente e molto aderente alla realtà.
Molto consigliato, tranne agli indomiti Statalisti / Keynesiani, per i quali potrebbe risultare indigesto.
E' suddiviso in tre sezioni, la prima generale/teorica, le altre due relative alla public choice applicata alle scelte politiche ed economiche in USA e UK.
Per questo la lettura tende a perdere un po' di interesse, per quanto comunque di alto livello.
Il libro è comunque un brutto colpo alla nostra fiducia nello Stato e nella Politica, ma è innegabile che sia pertinente e molto aderente alla realtà.
Molto consigliato, tranne agli indomiti Statalisti / Keynesiani, per i quali potrebbe risultare indigesto.
November 14, 2016
The first half of this book is an excellent overview of public choice theory by one of its founders, Gordon Tullock. The second half of the book, not written by Tullock, consists of a series of chapters purporting to apply public choice theory to different topics (such as international trade and environmental policy). These chapters are pretty lousy and much of the analysis is out of date (for example, the chapter on the Internet contains a discussion of how the use of .com vs .org domains will lead to rent seeking). Since the book is only $3 for kindle and less in paperback, I would suggest buying it and then just not reading the second half.
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