Government

Government as an institution is the subject of a large block of books-to-read on political philosophy, public choice and constitutional design. Referring pages split roughly three ways:

• Arguments that it should be smaller or absent: For a New Liberty (the institution the book argues is unnecessary), The Machinery of Freedom (an institution the book proposes to do without), Man, Economy, and State, The Enterprise of Law (the monopoly the book questions), State and Revolution (the institution it argues cannot be reformed, only replaced).
• Models of government as self-interested actors and its failures: Public Choice: Politics without Romance, The Calculus of Consent, Government Failure (Tullock), Democracy and Political Ignorance, Crisis and Leviathan and Government’s End (the sclerosis of the institution), The Intellectual Crisis in American Public Administration.
• Legitimacy and constitutional design: Second Treatise of Government, The Spirit of the Laws, The Founders’ Constitution, Toward a More Perfect Union, The Concept of Law, Land of Hope, Keeping At It (the “good government” half of its subtitle), Athens & Sparta: Democracy vs. Dictatorship (two constitutions as institutional designs).

A saved thread by Michelle Tandler, I have been researching San… (tweet), was filed under Government and Policy for San Francisco.

Where this appears

books-to-read (29)

• A Matter of Interpretation
• Confident Pluralism
• Crisis and Leviathan
• Democracy and Political Ignorance
• For a New Liberty
• Government Failure (Tullock)
• Government’s End
• Keeping At It
• Land of Hope
• Madmen, Intellectuals, and Academic Scribblers
• Man, Economy, and State
• Public Choice: Politics without Romance
• Robert Nozick’s Political Philosophy (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)
• Robust Political Economy
• Second Treatise of Government
• State and Revolution
• The Calculus of Consent
• The Concept of Law
• The Constitution of Liberty
• The Enterprise of Law
• The Founders’ Constitution
• The Intellectual Crisis in American Public Administration
• The Machinery of Freedom
• The Political Economy of Soviet Socialism
• The Spirit of the Laws
• The Vision of the Anointed
• Toward a More Perfect Union
• Understanding Institutional Diversity
• Why I, Too, Am Not a Conservative

articles-to-read (1)

• Athens & Sparta: Democracy vs. Dictatorship

people (1)

• Michelle Tandler

tweets (1)

• I have been researching San… (tweet)