Research Catalog

Title

Beyond politics : markets, welfare and the failure of bureaucracy / William C. Mitchell and Randy T. Simmons.

Author

Mitchell, William C.

Publication

Boulder : Westview Press, 1994.

Items in the Library & Off-site

Holdings

Details

Additional Authors

Simmons, Randy T.

Description

xix, 234 pages; 23 cm

Summary

• Traditional public policy and welfare economics have held that "market failures" are common, requiring the intervention of government in order to serve and protect the public good. In Beyond Politics, William Mitchell and Randy Simmons carefully scrutinize this traditional view through the modern theory of public choice.
• The authors enlighten the relationship of government and markets by emphasizing the actual rather than the ideal workings of governments and by reuniting the insights of economics with those of political science. Beyond Politics traces the anatomy of "government failure" and a pathology of contemporary political institutions as government has become a vehicle for private gain at public expense.
• In so doing, this brisk and vigorous book examines a host of public issues, including social welfare, consumer protection, and the environment. Offering a unified and powerful perspective on the market process, property rights, politics, contracts, and government bureaucracy, Beyond Politics is a lucid and comprehensive book on the foundations and institutions of a free and humane society.

Subjects

• Social choice
• Bureaucracy

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references and index.

Contents

Foreword / Gordon Tullock -- 1. Market Failure and Government Intervention: The View from Welfare Economics -- 2. Political Presuppositions of the Idealized State -- 3. Unromantic Side of Democracy -- 4. Pathological Politics: The Anatomy of Government Failure -- 5. Politics of Free and Forced Rides: Providing Public Goods -- 6. Political Pursuit of Private Gain: Producer-Rigged Markets -- 7. Political Pursuit of Private Gain: Government Exploitation -- 8. Political Pursuit of Private Gain: Consumer Protection -- 9. Political Pursuit of Private Gain: Environmental Goods -- 10. Political Pursuit of Private Gain: Coercive Redistribution -- 11. Micro-Politics of Macro-Instability -- 12. Rediscovery of Markets, Competition, and the Firm -- 13. Privatization, Deregulation, and Constitutionalism.

ISBN

• 0813322073
• 0813322081 (pbk.)

LCCN

94012008

OCLC

• 30156140
• ocm30156140

Owning Institutions

Columbia University Libraries