Up@dawn 2.0

Tuesday, June 26, 2018


This relates to the Democracy in Chains by Nancy MacLean post from Thursday. Here Dr. MacLean of Duke University speaks at Harvard about her book and makes some interesting connections between the Charles Koch Foundation and our own celebrated alumnus James M. Buchanan.

I find that she makes an interesting point about Buchanan's landmark public choice theory at [42:20] when she notes that Harvard Professor Steve Kelman wrote a piece about this in 1986 saying

 “that public choice economics was not only descriptively wrong about why public actors make the choices that they do, it could be proven wrong empirically (even though Buchanan never showed interest in empirical confirmation of his theories) but Kelman also said that it's those ideas threatened to undermine the very norm of public spiritedness on which good governance and a decent political culture depend.”

3 comments:

  1. Thanks for posting this, Chase. A footnote in MacLean's book makes the same point: "[Kelman] notes, too, how Buchanan's ideas “threaten to become self-fulfilling” by discrediting the aspirational behavioral norm of public spirit; Steven Kelman, “'Public Choice' and Public Spirit,” The Public Interest 87 (March 1987): 80–94, ...

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  2. Chase,

    Thank you for sharing. I watched the entire program and have the book on reserve at the library. I think we need to see what we can do to invite Dr. MacLean to MTSU to talk about her book.

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    1. That's a terrific idea, Don. Let's pursue it! (But don't count on support from the Honors College.)

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