Politics Without Romance but With Ethics
Public Choice and Political Morality
Very short summary: In this essay, I reflect on the ethical nature of politics. Even from a public choice theory perspective, politics must be practiced with an appropriate ethic to make sure that individuals are willing to support the significant costs of political participation without trying to impose their views on others.
I’ve been writing a lot here on political morality and more specifically how politics is (or should be) practiced. This issue has been of long-standing concern for philosophers and social scientists. You find in the literature a series of distinctions/dichotomies that all express more or less the same idea that politics can be practiced either as a rationalistic quest for ultimate values or as a pragmatic activity of cautiously balancing ends. For instance, this is the case for Max Weber’s distinction between the ethics of absolute ends and the ethics of responsibility, Raymond Aron’s politics of reason vs politics of understanding, or Michael Oakeshott’s politics of faith vs politics of skepticism.[1] Though they differ on subtle aspects, these conceptions all agree that politics is different from pursuing one’s interests.
Then come political economists, and more specifically, those self-identifying as members of the “public choice” tradition. Political economists tend to have a far less “romantic” view of politics, contrary to the above-mentioned philosophers and social scientists. This is more than suggested by the title of an article by one of the pioneers of public choice theory, James Buchanan: “Politics Without Romance.”[2] The article recapitulates the core principles of the economic analysis of politics. First, a commitment to methodological individualism. Though politics is mostly practiced within organizations or, at least, collectives (political parties, public administrations, parliaments, government), political decisions are at the bottom made by individuals. An economic analysis of politics is therefore an analysis of individual decision-making and of the social/political outcomes that are produced by individual choices.
In itself, methodological individualism doesn’t contradict the idea that political agents pursue ends that transcend their self-interest. However, when combined with the assumption that these agents are rational, it implies that politics, like any human activity, involves tradeoffs. This leads to a second core principle. Because individuals must make tradeoffs, mutually advantageous exchanges are possible. The notion of “political exchange” may not be necessarily clear at first sight. Such exchanges occur at two different levels. First, political agents have to agree on a set of rules defining a “constitutional order.” These rules will determine how politics is practiced on a daily basis. They will determine, for instance, how the executive is chosen, how the executive interacts with the legislative and the judiciary, and so on. Once a constitution is chosen, political agents can make various lower-level political exchanges within the set of rules agreed on. That includes, for example, trading votes directly (if permitted) or indirectly (the so-called log-rolling).
The third core principle of the economics of politics is that political exchanges largely proceed from the political agents’ interests rather than values. More generally, political outcomes —especially at the second, “post-constitutional” level— are far from reflecting ideals and impartial conceptions of the common good. This is at this point that romance exits politics. Political exchanges resemble economic exchanges because individuals use them as a way to improve their personal situation. This is true at the constitutional level —where individuals try to agree on a set of rules — as well as at the post-constitutional level —where individuals try to win elections or have some (public) goods produced and allocated to them. A key difference between the two domains is that economic exchanges are made “at the margin.” An individual can choose to increase the quantity of a given good she is consuming by giving more money. In politics, very often, decisions are of the all-or-nothing type. Either your most preferred policy is implemented or not. That explains why politics is about coercion. Political decisions are to be enforced on everyone, including individuals who would prefer that another decision had been made. What we call political legitimacy is all about having the collectively recognized permissibility to coerce people to do things they would not want to do.
From this economic perspective, politics is without romance because political agents, including officials and bureaucrats, are not different from the rest of us. They are not committed to the common good —we should definitely reject the figure of the “benevolent dictator” that was popular among welfare economists and that is still sometimes naively assumed. They also face the same limitations in terms of information and knowledge as any other agent. Their ignorance would prevent them from acting for the common good, even if they had the intention to. Finally, this idea of the common good is, anyway, elusive. There are interests and values, very often in competition, and sometimes impossible to be commensurate with each other. At best, politics provides a framework to pursue these competing interests and values in harmony. At worst, it is a war where the most destructive means can be used to achieve any end judged to be worth the trouble.
“The Death of Socrates,” Jacques-Louis David (1787)
There are some similarities between the public choice conception of politics and one of the alternatives of each dichotomy/distinction mentioned at the beginning of this essay. When Weber, Aron, or Oakeshott characterize politics and its ethics in terms of “responsibility,” “understanding,” or “skepticism,” they reject the naive view that politics consists in the devotion to the pursuit of grand ideals that transcend individual interests. The rejection is partially motivated by observations of how politics is actually practiced. This is especially clear with Weber. Politics is about making choices, very often difficult choices between incommensurable alternatives. The blind and uncompromising adherence to values is incompatible with the very nature of politics. Ignoring this ontological feature is likely to lead to disasters and tragedies. If the “ends justify the means,” politics is turned into a weapon where some, be they a minority or a majority, grant themselves the right to dominate the rest.
The public choice conception seems to depart from these views by offering a pessimistic perspective about the possibility that politics can be about anything else than interests. This doesn’t mean that, from the public choice perspective, politics is only about conflicts. Political cooperation is possible because individuals do have a common interest in agreeing on a set of rules. But this agreement rests on Machiavellian foundations, so to speak. The Weberian or Aronian view of politics is somehow different. We should not be naive about people’s intentions, and we should be wary of those who pretend (sincerely or not) to pursue absolute values. However, politics is based on an ethic that is thicker than the mere contingent convergence of individual interests. It corresponds to what I would call an “ethos of reconciliation.” Being aware of our radical disagreements and on the fact that politics is about the legitimization of coercion, we consider it our duty to do our best to justify to others our views while properly acknowledging theirs. This is incompatible with the pursuit of values and ideals at all costs.
Public choice theorists somehow acknowledge this. In his article “The Ethics of the Constitutional Order,”[3] Buchanan remarks that the vision of the constitutional order that informed the thinking of American Founding Fathers, especially James Madison, embodies a “recognition that the individual, as citizen, must accept the ethical responsibility of full and informed participation in a continuing constitutional convention.”[4] The “continuing choice” of a constitutional order cannot consist, for each individual, of imposing their most preferred option on others. It necessarily consists of making compromises between competing considerations, based on one’s and others’ interests and values. The problem is that striking such a compromise on a continuous basis is individually costly, without bringing any significant and direct benefits. Political economists have emphasized that the lack of impact of individual political decisions, like casting a vote, encourages “rational ignorance”[5] or even “rational irrationality”[6] in post-constitutional politics. At the constitutional level, the risk is rather of rational indifference. Because of that, “becoming informed about, and participating in the discussion of, constitutional rules must reflect the presence of some ethical precept that transcends rational interest for the individual.”[7]
Here comes the fundamental risk. The individuals most likely to have the motivation to devote resources to their participation in the discussion of constitutional rules are those who are animated by the “politics of faith.” That makes them ready to impose great costs, on them and others, to impose their worldview on everyone. Those of us who don’t have this intrinsic motivation are more likely to be indifferent to constitutional matters. This is just another version of the Tocquevillian tale that “individualism” may foster political indifference. Spontaneous self-selection risks leaving constitutional politics in the hands of those who will misuse it, irrespective of whether their intentions are good or bad. This outcome is not unavoidable as long as we keep this risk in mind and practice politics so as to lessen it.
[1] Max Weber, The Vocation Lectures (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Co, Inc, 2004). Raymond Aron, Introduction à la philosophie de l’histoire: Essai sur les limites de l’objectivité historique (Paris: Gallimard, 1991). Michael Oakeshott, The Politics of Faith and the Politics of Scepticism, ed. Timothy Fuller (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996).
[2] In James M. Buchanan, The Logical Foundations of Constitutional Liberty, Volume 1 (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1999), pp. 45-59.
[3] In Buchanan, The Logical Foundations of Constitutional Liberty, pp. 368-76.
[4] Ibid., p. 372.
[5] Anthony Downs, An Economic Theory of Democracy, First Edition (Boston: Harper and Row, 1957).
[6] Bryan Caplan, The Myth of the Rational Voter: Why Democracies Choose Bad Policies - New Edition, Revised edition (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2008).
[7] Buchanan, The Logical Foundations of Constitutional Liberty, p. 371.