The Vote Motive5/15/2007 |
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Book Review A onetime infantry soldier and diplomat, Gordon Tullock is a lawyer by training but an economist by nature. He "is someone who more or less consciously thinks like an economist" (James Buchanan, 1987). And think he has. Tullock's ideas have had profound influence on the course of economic, political, and legal understanding. Most economists in the 20th century were content to inhabit the narrowly-circumscribed research program they inherited from Alfred Marshall. But Tullock understood that the techniques of his adopted field could be applied well beyond markets. Long before Steven Levitt, he and a handful of others reminded the profession that Adam Smith's tools of analysis can shed light on other human institutions, be they political, legal, or social. Nowhere has Tullock's influence been more pronounced than in the field he helped found: public choice. Tullock not only wrote some of the early canonical public choice pieces, notably The Calculus of Consent (with James Buchanan) and The Welfare Costs of Tariffs Monopolies and Theft. He also stridently championed the field, helping to organize the Public Choice Society and found the journal which became Public Choice. Tullock's writing is clear and conversational (and like most conversations, occasionally veers into digression). He prefers unadorned prose and basic geometry to mathematical acrobatics. Simple though his technique may be, his ideas are far from simplistic. As Professor Congleton has put it, "A good deal of Tullock's work uses simple models to demonstrate that the world is more complex than may have previously been appreciated." (Roger Congleton, 2004) It is fitting, then, for Tullock to pen an introduction to the field he helped develop. Those interested in such an introduction would be well advised to turn to Tullock's seminal primer, The Vote Motive. It has recently been reissued by the Institute of Economic Affairs. Originally published in 1976, the new edition includes an introduction by professor Kurrild-Klitgaard and commentaries by Professors Charles Rowley, Stefan Voight, and Michael Munger. An early success of The Vote Motive, achieved in the first chapter, is to put the research program into perspective. Prior to the development of public choice, 20th century economics tended to analyze economic man-the man who bought, who sold, who labored or invested-as a completely different creature from political man-the man who voted, who lobbied, who ran for office. To be more precise, the pre-public choice approach was not to analyze political man at all. Instead, it was simply taken for granted that when a human being performed a political act, she shed her rational self-interest and made decisions in order to advance the public good. The pre-public choice modus operandi was to analyze market interaction and describe the conditions under which markets could be expected to perform well or poorly. If a reason was found to cast doubt on the efficacy of markets in achieving societal good, the pre-public choice economist proffered a government-imposed corrective policy. It was assumed that whatever policy chosen-a tax, a subsidy, a regulation-was effectuated just as the economist wrote that it ought to be. Tullock compares the process of analysis to a Roman legend: "[A] Roman emperor who, being asked to judge a contest between two singers, heard only the first and gave the prize to the second, assuming he could not be worse." (Gordon Tullock, 2006). Public choice research aims to use the tools of economics to analyze human interaction in political contexts; to listen to the second singer. As Professor Voigt remarks in his commentary, it is somewhat unfortunate that Tullock chose The Vote Motive for his title, "as he barely deals with the issue in the paper." (Stefan Voigt, 2006). The choice is particularly regrettable given the large body of interesting and occasionally contentious research on voting motivation which has emerged since the monograph was originally published. Tullock writes, "Mr. Smith buys and votes....There is no strong reason to believe his behavior is radically different in the two environments." (Gordon Tullock, 2006). One wonders if Tullock would have written this today. Since The Vote Motive was originally released, a number of studies have offered compelling evidence that voting involves a motivating factor which is largely absent from market decisions. Known as the "expressive" motivation, this is the utility a person receives from voting irrespective of his vote's influence on the outcome. In other words, when Mr. Smith buys a can of Coke, he does so mainly because he wants to effect a change in his stock of soda and cash. This is called an "instrumental" motivation because Smith sees his purchase as an instrument to effect change. When Mr. Smith votes for Ralph Nader, however, his motivation may be more complex. Surely he may want to effect a change in the person occupying the White House. But knowing the vanishingly small impact his vote is likely to have on the outcome, this instrumental factor may not be Mr. Smith's primary motive. Instead, his main concern may be to express an opinion-either his appreciation for Mr. Nader or perhaps his disgust with the other candidates. This expressive motivation has been likened to the utility a fan enjoys when she roots for a basketball team. She enjoys chanting "we will rock you" even though she knows it is unlikely to affect the outcome of the game. Scientifically speaking, the expressive motivation is important because there is reason to believe that when people make expressive judgments, they rely on less information than they do when they make instrumental judgments. (Geoffrey Brennan and Loren Lomasky, 1993). Tullock's colleague, Professor Bryan Caplan, goes further. In a book out this year, Dr. Caplan argues that the psychology of voting involves not only uninformed decisions, but irrational ones. (Bryan Caplan, 2007). (Interestingly, Tullock himself alluded to this in his own early work on the subject. See Tullock, Gordon. Toward a Mathematics of Politics. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1967b., Chapter 7.) Tullock's discussions of the median voter theorem and of the difference between multi-party and two-party outcomes are brief but good. A more advanced introduction to public choice would address the well known problem of cycling, a topic which Tullock tends to think is relatively unimportant anyway. (Gordon Tullock, 1967a). The Vote Motive also offers a readable and intuitive account of bureaucracy, a research area launched by Tullock. Tullock's original inquiry (1965) was less formal than later work offered by Professor Niskanen (1971) and The Vote Motive relies primarily on the latter's model. Tullock concludes his discussion of bureaucracy with a fascinating suggestion for improving a bureau's efficiency. Its geographic jurisdiction might be sectioned into separate divisions, each headed by its own chief. The relative success of each division would be measured on a regular basis and the borders of the divisions shifted in order to reward well-performing units. The idea is pure Tullock: intuitive, practical and original. The Vote Motive also includes a nice discussion of logrolling, a phenomenon which before Buchanan and Tullock's Calculus of Consent (1962) was unanimously treated with disdain ("logrolling" is an American colloquialism which refers to vote trading). Tullock shows that under some circumstances logrolling can be beneficial. It permits minority voters with intense preferences for certain policies to realize policy goals that would be impossible without trading votes. Assume that a deep water port can be built in Congressman Smith's district and that the social benefits of construction are greater than the social costs. Though it would be efficient to build the port, the benefits of construction accrue mainly to Smith and his constituents and a majority of congressmen are unlikely to vote for the port. But, if Smith can promise to support, say, a highway in Jones' district and a canal in Roberts' district, then the others might be persuaded to support the port. Of course, logrolling doesn't always work out so nicely. It could also be the case that the port and the canal are inefficient (total social cost might exceed total social benefit). Smith and Roberts might agree to vote for one another's inefficient pet projects and to finance them with a tax levied on everyone. The story is sadly familiar to anyone acquainted with pork barrel politics. What can be done to ensure that government only undertakes efficient projects? There is, unfortunately, no magic bullet yet devised. One partial solution according to Tullock, is to require government decisions be made by "reinforced" majorities, or (as they are more commonly called in the U.S.) supermajorities. In making this case, Tullock draws on one of the most important constructs of The Calculus of Consent, a diagram depicting the external and bargaining costs associated with a spectrum of voting rules. The surprising conclusion of the exercise is the discovery that "only by coincidence would [the optimal voting rule] be the simple majority." (Gordon Tullock, 2006). It is likely that readers of The Vote Motive will make another discovery: public choice is a fascinating field worthy of further study. ------- Matthew Mitchell, a one-time student of Gordon Tullock, is a Ph.D. candidate in economics and regular instructor of undergraduate public choice at George Mason University. For the last two years he was Bradley Fellow at the Center for Study of Public Choice.
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