IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/wly/soecon/v85y2019i3p715-741.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

James M. Buchanan and the Political Economy of Desegregation

Author

Listed:
  • Phillip W. Magness
  • Art Carden
  • Vincent Geloso

Abstract

Were 1986 Nobel Laureate James M. Buchanan's formative contributions to political economy inspired in significant part by hostility to the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision? Nancy MacLean's 2017 Democracy in Chains argues that public choice economics emerged from an opportunistic alliance with Virginia's “Massive Resistance” to school integration and should thus be situated within the racially tinged tradition of southern conservatism. While Buchanan wrote very little on the economics of race, archival evidence and his published works do not support this thesis. Buchanan's work is better understood with reference to his Chicago school mentor Frank Knight and the Italian public finance tradition rather than southern conservatism. To the contrary, we suggest Buchanan believed the competitive processes generated by an educational voucher system would likely undermine rather than rescue the racially segregated status quo. Furthermore, Buchanan's associations and activities suggest that racial hierarchy was not part of his normative vision.

Suggested Citation

  • Phillip W. Magness & Art Carden & Vincent Geloso, 2019. "James M. Buchanan and the Political Economy of Desegregation," Southern Economic Journal, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 85(3), pages 715-741, January.
    • Handle: RePEc:wly:soecon:v:85:y:2019:i:3:p:715-741
    DOI: 10.1002/soej.12317
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1002/soej.12317
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1002/soej.12317?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
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Jean-Baptiste Fleury & Alain Marciano, 2018. "The Sound of Silence: A Review Essay of Nancy MacLean's Democracy in Chains: The Deep History of the Radical Right's Stealth Plan for America," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 56(4), pages 1492-1537, December.
    2. James M. Buchanan, 1992. "On Some Fundamental Issues in Political Economy: An Exchange of Correspondence," Palgrave Macmillan Books, in: Essays on the Methodology and Discourse of Economics, chapter 10, pages 201-230, Palgrave Macmillan.
    3. Jean-Baptiste Fleury & Alain Marciano, 2018. "The Making of a Constitutionalist," Post-Print hal-03472351, HAL.
    4. Jean-Baptiste Fleury, 2012. "Wandering from the Borderlands of Social Sciences: Gary Becker's "The Economics of Discrimination," Post-Print hal-01410538, HAL.
    5. Temin, Peter, 2018. "The Vanishing Middle Class: Prejudice and Power in a Dual Economy, new epilogue," MIT Press Books, The MIT Press, edition 0, volume 1, number 0262535297, December.
    6. Brennan,Geoffrey & Buchanan,James M., 2006. "The Power to Tax," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521027922, January.
    7. Rae, Douglas W., 1975. "The Limits of Consensual Decision," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 69(4), pages 1270-1294, December.
    8. Jean-Baptiste Fleury, 2012. "Wandering through the Borderlands of the Social Sciences: Gary Becker's Economics of Discrimination," History of Political Economy, Duke University Press, vol. 44(1), pages 1-40, Spring.
    9. William Darity, 1987. "Abram Harris: An Odyssey from Howard to Chicago," The Review of Black Political Economy, Springer;National Economic Association, vol. 15(3), pages 4-40, December.
    10. repec:hop:hopeec:12-01 is not listed on IDEAS
    11. Knut Wicksell, 1958. "A New Principle of Just Taxation," International Economic Association Series, in: Richard A. Musgrave & Alan T. Peacock (ed.), Classics in the Theory of Public Finance, pages 72-118, Palgrave Macmillan.
    12. Peter Lewin, 2000. "William Hutt and the Economics of Apartheid," Constitutional Political Economy, Springer, vol. 11(3), pages 255-264, September.
    13. James M. Buchanan, 1949. "The Pure Theory of Government Finance: A Suggested Approach," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 57(6), pages 496-496.
    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. Joshua C. Hall, 2020. "Academia in Anarchy: 50 years on," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 183(3), pages 405-416, June.
    2. Viktor J. Vanberg, 2020. "J. M. Buchanan’s contractarian constitutionalism: political economy for democratic society," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 183(3), pages 339-370, June.
    3. Alain Marciano, 2020. "Buchanan, Popular Myths, and the Social Responsibility of Economists," Southern Economic Journal, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 86(4), pages 1613-1629, April.
    4. Phillip W. Magness, 2020. "The anti-discriminatory tradition in Virginia school public choice theory," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 183(3), pages 417-441, June.

    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. Bernd Hansjürgens, 2000. "The Influence of Knut Wicksell on Richard Musgrave and James Buchanan," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 103(1), pages 95-116, April.
    2. Paolo Silvestri, 2021. "Percentage tax designation institutions. On Sugden’s contractarian account," International Review of Economics, Springer;Happiness Economics and Interpersonal Relations (HEIRS), vol. 68(1), pages 101-130, March.
    3. Phillip W. Magness, 2020. "The anti-discriminatory tradition in Virginia school public choice theory," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 183(3), pages 417-441, June.
    4. Shruti Rajagopalan & Richard Wagner, 2013. "Constitutional craftsmanship and the rule of law," Constitutional Political Economy, Springer, vol. 24(4), pages 295-309, December.
    5. Stanley L. Winer, 2016. "The Political Economy of Taxation: Power, Structure, Redistribution," Carleton Economic Papers 16-15, Carleton University, Department of Economics.
    6. Silvestri, Paolo, 2015. "Anthropology of Freedom and Tax Justice: Between Exchange and Gift. Thoughts for an Interdisciplinary Research Agenda," Department of Economics and Statistics Cognetti de Martiis. Working Papers 201534, University of Turin.
    7. Horn, Karen, 2011. "James M. Buchanan – Doing away with discrimination and domination," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 80(2), pages 358-366.
    8. Franck Bailly, 2022. "When mainstream economics does human resource management: a critique of personnel economics’ prescriptive ambition," Post-Print hal-03711945, HAL.
    9. Roger Congleton, 2014. "The contractarian constitutional political economy of James Buchanan," Constitutional Political Economy, Springer, vol. 25(1), pages 39-67, March.
    10. James Gwartney & Randall Holcombe, 2014. "Politics as exchange: the classical liberal economics and politics of James M. Buchanan," Constitutional Political Economy, Springer, vol. 25(3), pages 265-279, September.
    11. Peter Boettke, 2018. "Economics and Public Administration," Southern Economic Journal, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 84(4), pages 938-959, April.
    12. Randall G. Holcombe, 2020. "James M. Buchanan’s constitutional project: past and future," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 183(3), pages 371-387, June.
    13. Fontaine, Philippe & Pooley, Jefferson, 2020. "Introduction: Whose Social Problems?," SocArXiv w59f3, Center for Open Science.
    14. Lars Feld, 2014. "James Buchanan’s theory of federalism: from fiscal equity to the ideal political order," Constitutional Political Economy, Springer, vol. 25(3), pages 231-252, September.
    15. Nicolás Cachanosky & Edward J. Lopez, 2020. "Rediscovering Buchanan’s rediscovery: non-market exchange versus antiseptic allocation," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 183(3), pages 461-477, June.
    16. Peter Boettke & Alain Marciano, 2015. "The past, present and future of Virginia Political Economy," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 163(1), pages 53-65, April.
    17. Bryan Caplan & Edward Stringham, 2005. "Mises, bastiat, public opinion, and public choice," Review of Political Economy, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 17(1), pages 79-105.
    18. Francisco de Castro, 2006. "The macroeconomic effects of fiscal policy in Spain," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 38(8), pages 913-924.
    19. John Roemer, 2005. "Distribution and politics: a brief history and prospect," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 25(2), pages 507-525, December.
    20. Cao, Chunfang & Li, Xiaoyang & Xia, Changyuan, 2021. "The complicit role of local government authorities in corporate bribery: Evidence from a tax collection reform in China," China Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 65(C).

    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:wly:soecon:v:85:y:2019:i:3:p:715-741. 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: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://doi.org/10.1002/(ISSN)2325-8012 .

    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.