The Calculus of Consent, the second volume of Liberty Fund's The Selected Works of Gordon Tullock, is a reprint edition of the ground-breaking economic classic written by two of the world's preeminent economists--Gordon Tullock and Nobel Laureate James M. Buchanan. This book is a unique blend of economics and political science that helped create significant new subfields in each discipline respectively, namely, the public choice school and constitutional political economy. Charles K. Rowley, Duncan Black Professor of Economics at George Mason University, points out in his introduction, "The Calculus of Consent is, by a wide margin, the most widely cited publication of each coauthor and, by general agreement, their most important scientific contribution." The Calculus of Consent is divided into four parts, each consisting of several chapters. The introduction by Professor Rowley provides a short overview of the book and identifies key insights that permeated the bounds of economics and political science and created an enduring nexus between the two sciences. Part I of The Calculus of Consent establishes the conceptual framework of the book's subject; part II defines the realm of social choice; part III applies the logic developed in part II to describe a range of decision-making rules, most notably, the rule of simple majority; and part IV explores the economics and ethics of democracy. Gordon Tullock is Professor Emeritus of Law at George Mason University, where he was Distinguished Research Fellow in the Center for Study of Public Choice and University Professor of Law and Economics. He also taught at the University of South Carolina, the University of Virginia, Rice University, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, and the University of Arizona. In 1966 he founded the journal that became Public Choice and remained its editor until 1990. James M. Buchanan is an eminent economist who won the Alfred Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences in 1986 and is considered one of the greatest scholars of liberty of the twentieth century. He is also Professor Emeritus at George Mason and Virginia Tech Universities. Charles K. Rowley was Duncan Black Professor of Economics at George Mason University and a Senior Fellow of the James M. Buchanan Center for Political Economy at George Mason University. He was also General Director of the Locke Institute.

The fifth volume in The Selected Works of Gordon Tullock consists of six parts, each part expounding on a separate component of the field. Part 1, "Rent Seeking: An Overview," brings together two papers that focus on problems of defining rent-seeking behavior and outline the nature of the ongoing research program in a historical perspective. Part 2, "More on Efficient Rent Seeking," contains four contributions in which Tullock elaborates on his 1980 article on efficient rent seeking. Part 3, "The Environments of Rent Seeking," consists of eight papers that collectively display the breadth of the rent-seeking concept. Part 4, "The Cost of Rent Seeking," comprises seven papers that address several important issues about the cost of rent seeking to society as a whole. Part 5 is Tullock's short monograph Exchanges and Contracts, in which he develops a systematic theory of exchange in political markets. In Part 6, "Future Directions for Rent-Seeking Research," Tullock focuses on the importance of information in the political marketplace. This work has been carefully constructed to build on the inaugural volume in this collection and to ease students through the field in a clear and concise manner. Gordon Tullock is Professor Emeritus of Law at George Mason University, where he was Distinguished Research Fellow in the Center for Study of Public Choice and University Professor of Law and Economics. He also taught at the University of South Carolina, the University of Virginia, Rice University, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, and the University of Arizona. In 1966 he founded the journal that became Public Choice and remained its editor until 1990. Charles K. Rowley was Duncan Black Professor of Economics at George Mason University and a Senior Fellow of the James M. Buchanan Center for Political Economy at George Mason University. He was also General Director of the Locke Institute.

The book features Professor Tullock s normal array of insights and gems of wisdom throughout. The thesis of the book, to view government through the prism of externalities, is intriguing and makes the book well worth reading. Daniel Sutter, Public Choice The book can be commended for introducing a broad range of thought-provoking ideas in an accessible form. It is an easy read, but does not achieve (nor does it aspire to) the usual standards of academic rigour. It is in places retrospective and in others polemical. But all of it is entertaining. Gareth Myles, Economica The book offers a nice introduction into public choice but still has enough in it to keep more advanced scholars interested. Well worth reading for anyone with even a modicum of interest in economics and/or politics in the most non-partisan sense. Phong Ngo, Economic Record Tullock provides a readable account of public choice economics and the problems with collective decision making. . . Highly recommended. M. Steckbeck, Choice Gordon Tullock, eminent political economist and one of the founders of public choice, offers this new and fascinating look at how governments and externalities are linked. Economists frequently justify government as dealing with externalities, defined as benefits or costs that are generated as the result of an economic activity, but that do not accrue directly to those involved in the activity. In this original work, Gordon Tullock posits that government can also create externalities. In doing so, he looks at governmental activity that internalizes such externalities. Monarchical governments originally introduced, for the benefit of the monarch rather than to eliminate externalities, many standard government activities such as road building, war, and internal policing. Most modern governments spend more money on redistribution than on more traditional government activities. This can be thought of as another effort to reduce externalities, since suffering in the community imposes externalities on the rest of us. Rent seeking, a relatively new field in economics and political science, is closely related to externalities and to the structure of government. An analysis of rent seeking, as well as some suggestions for improving government structure, cap off this fascinating treatise. Economists and political scientists will find this lively and readable book both stimulating and provocative.

Traditional public policy and welfare economics have held that “market failures”—the presumed inability of a free market to deliver certain goods and services deemed to be in the public interest—are common and require government intervention to protect the public good. But is this actually the case? Beyond Politics carefully scrutinizes this view through the modern theory of public choice and systematically explains how government is producing a scandal of political myopia, economic stagnation, and public distrust. The book traces the anatomy of “government failure” and a pathology of political institutions. Social welfare, consumer protection, education, trade, the environment, and crime are some of the topics the book examines. Originally published in 1995, Beyond Politics has been updated to provide readers with insights about the crash of 2008, America’s fiscal crisis, and other realities of twenty-first century political economy. Offering a powerful perspective on market processes, property rights, politics, and government bureaucracy, this newly revised and updated edition is a lucid and comprehensive examination of the foundations of a free and humane society.

American foreign policy is a dynamic and often controversial field, and is currently a topic of deep interest given recent developments in the Middle East, North Korea and China. In order to understand where US foreign policy is headed, it is important to first examine where it came from. This book provides an analysis of the political, economic and military history of American foreign policy, with the aim of divulging important details that most people have either never learned or forgotten — hence the phrase “open secrets”. Covering events such as the attack on Pearl Harbor and the American Revolution, as well as American involvement in the Korean War and the collapse of Nationalist China, this fascinating book debunks a number of myths held by most people regarding US foreign policy, revealing some surprising conclusions.

As the reader of this book probably already knows, I have devoted a great deal of time to the topic which is, rather unfortunately, named rent seeking. Rent seeking, the use of resources in actually lowering total product although benefiting some minority, is, unfortunately, a major activity of most governments. As a result of this, I have stumbled on a puzzle. The rent-seeking activity found in major societies is immense, but the industry devoted to producing it is nowhere near as immense. In Washington the rent-seeking industry is a very conspicuous part of the landscape. On the other hand, if you consider how much money is being moved by that industry, then it is comparatively small. The first question that this book seeks to answer is: How do we account for the disparity? A second problem is that almost all rent seeking is done in what superficially appears to be an extremely inefficient way. I recently got estimates of the net cost to the public of the farm program and its net benefit to the farmers. The first is many times the second. Indeed, it is not at all obvious that in the long run, today's farmers are better off than they would be if the program had never been implemented. Of course, in any given year, cancelling the program would be quite painful. The first section of this book, then, is devoted to this problem.

Gordon Tullock is among a small group of living legends in the field of political economics. This volume provides an entree to the mind of an original thinker. Professor Rowley provides deliberately sparse contextual introduction to each volume, opting to allow the very able and eloquent Tullock to speak for himself.

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.

This collection of previously unpublished expository writings by Gordon Tullock on themes ranging from game theory, externalities, public choice, rent-seeking, law and economics, and economic progress is representative of the breadth of Tullock's career. As co-founder of Public Choice, Tullock has been a major contributor to our understanding of the logic of collective choice and the politics of collective action. Tullock's insights have helped establish the unambiguous message that political, social, and economic institutions affect individual behavior whether in economics or political markets. Tullock's hypotheses, proposed laws, and paradoxes have shaped the development of public choice, as well as charting new areas in law, economics, and sociobiology. In sorting through Tullock's personal papers, the editors learned and here present the many dimensions of the man and the breadth of his interests. From the papers, we can piece together much of Tullock's personal history. For example, there are myths surrounding Gordon Tullock that can be laid to rest: his birthplace, the lack of a baccalaureate degree, the "one" course that marks his formal training in economics, and his career prior to his academic emergence in the mid-1950s.