IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/kap/pubcho/v41y1983i3p441-448.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Non-global social contracts: A note on inefficient social institutions

Author

Listed:
  • Robert Blewett
  • Roger Congleton

Abstract

This paper explores some perverse features that can emerge when social contracts are moved from a social vacuum to a setting of social interdependence. In particular we note incentives that might exist in conjunction with externality problems that yield situations in which: (1) social contracts reduce social wealth; (2) sub-global social contracts are Pareto inferior to the absence of social contracts; (3) there are no incentives for global social contracts. While previous works emphasized the benefits of contracts, this paper focuses on their costs. A conclusion reached is that perhaps justice and efficiency demand not a single global social contract but rather a rich melange of sub-global contracts with appropriate interstices of anarchy. Copyright Martinus Nijhoff Publishers 1983

Suggested Citation

  • Robert Blewett & Roger Congleton, 1983. "Non-global social contracts: A note on inefficient social institutions," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 41(3), pages 441-448, January.
    • Handle: RePEc:kap:pubcho:v:41:y:1983:i:3:p:441-448
    DOI: 10.1007/BF00141077
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1007/BF00141077
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1007/BF00141077?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Milton Kafoglis & Richard Cebula, 1981. "The Buchanan-Tullock model: Some extensions," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 36(1), pages 179-186, January.
    2. Laurence Moss, 1980. "Optimal jurisdictions and the economic theory of the state: Or, anarchy and one-world government are only corner solutions," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 35(1), pages 17-26, January.
    3. Gordon Tullock, 1981. "Why so much stability," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 37(2), pages 189-204, January.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Roger D. Congleton, 2018. "Toward a Rule-Based Model of Human Choice: On the Nature of Homo Constitutionalus," Working Papers 18-09, Department of Economics, West Virginia University.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Andrea Sáenz de Viteri Vázquez & Christian Bjørnskov, 2020. "Constitutional power concentration and corruption: evidence from Latin America and the Caribbean," Constitutional Political Economy, Springer, vol. 31(4), pages 509-536, December.
    2. Kenneth Shepsle & Barry Weingast, 1981. "Structure-induced equilibrium and legislative choice," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 37(3), pages 503-519, January.
    3. Andreas Kyriacou, 2009. "Decision rules, membership and political centralization in the European Union," European Journal of Law and Economics, Springer, vol. 27(2), pages 143-158, April.
    4. Christian Bjørnskov & Axel Dreher & Justina Fischer, 2008. "Cross-country determinants of life satisfaction: exploring different determinants across groups in society," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 30(1), pages 119-173, January.
    5. Adam Smith & David Skarbek & Bart Wilson, 2012. "Anarchy, groups, and conflict: an experiment on the emergence of protective associations," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 38(2), pages 325-353, February.
    6. George R. Crowley, 2019. "The Law of 1/n Revisited: Distributive Politics, Legislature Size, and the Costs of Collective Action," Southern Economic Journal, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 86(2), pages 667-690, October.
    7. Francesco Parisi, 2012. "Markets, votes, and The Calculus of Consent," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 152(3), pages 451-453, September.
    8. Peter Bernholz, 1986. "A general constitutional possibility theorem," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 51(3), pages 249-265, January.
    9. James Buchanan & Yong Yoon, 2006. "All voting is strategic," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 129(1), pages 159-167, October.
    10. Thomas Bräuninger, 2007. "Stability in Spatial Voting Games with Restricted Preference Maximizing," Journal of Theoretical Politics, , vol. 19(2), pages 173-191, April.
    11. Iain McLean, 2015. "The strange history of social choice, and the contribution of the Public Choice Society to its fifth revival," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 163(1), pages 153-165, April.
    12. Justin Isaacs & David Laband, 1999. "Within-group homogeneity and exit in religious clubs," Applied Economics Letters, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 6(12), pages 805-808.
    13. Sauermann, Jan & Schwaninger, Manuel & Kittel, Bernhard, 2022. "Making and breaking coalitions: Strategic sophistication and prosociality in majority decisions," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 71(C).
    14. Mathieu Martin & Zéphirin Nganmeni, 2019. "The fi nagle point might not be within the Ɛ-core: a contradiction with Bräuninger's result," THEMA Working Papers 2019-03, THEMA (THéorie Economique, Modélisation et Applications), Université de Cergy-Pontoise.
    15. Abdul G. Noury, 2002. "Ideology, Nationality and Euro-Parliamentarians," European Union Politics, , vol. 3(1), pages 33-58, March.
    16. Randall Holcombe, 1986. "Non-optimal unanimous agreement," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 48(3), pages 229-244, January.
    17. Grace Skogstad & Matt Wilder, 2019. "Strangers at the gate: the role of multidimensional ideas, policy anomalies and institutional gatekeepers in biofuel policy developments in the USA and European Union," Policy Sciences, Springer;Society of Policy Sciences, vol. 52(3), pages 343-366, September.
    18. Tovey, Craig A., 2010. "The instability of instability of centered distributions," Mathematical Social Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 59(1), pages 53-73, January.
    19. Roger D. Congleton, 2016. "Gordon Tullock’s implicit analytical history of government," Constitutional Political Economy, Springer, vol. 27(2), pages 179-193, June.
    20. Ole-Jã˜Rgen Skog, 1994. "“Volonté Generale†and the Instability of Spatial Voting Games," Rationality and Society, , vol. 6(2), pages 271-285, April.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:kap:pubcho:v:41:y:1983:i:3:p:441-448. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.