关于公共选择理论是否不道德的：“高贵谎言”案例

窗体顶端 74 Va. L. Rev. 179, * Copyright ?1988 Virginia Law Review Association. Virginia Law Review MARCH, 1988 74 Va. L. Rev. 179 LENGTH: 3860 words SYMPOSIUM ON THE THEORY OF PUBLIC CHOICE: IS PUBLIC CHOICE IMMORAL? THE CASE FOR THE "NOBEL" LIE *. * A much earlier version of this paper was presented at the 1982 Annual Meeting of the Public Choice Society in San Antonio, Texas. We have been directly motivated to publish this revised version in partial response to the challenge by Steven Kelman in 87 Pub. Interest 80 (1987). NAME: Geoffrey Brennan ** and James M. Buchanan *** BIO: ** Adjunct Research Associate, Center for Study of Public Choice, George Mason University, and Professor of Economics, Australian National University. *** General Director, Center for Study of Public Choice, George Mason University. Nobel Laureate in Economics, 1986. SUMMARY: ... PUBLIC choice analysis -- the application of the theoretical method and techniques of modern economics to the study of political processes -- has come increasingly to popular attention in recent years. ... One involves the behavior of politicians/bureaucrats -- those who exercise discretionary power within the given political order. ... In extending the application of the homo economicus model to political contexts, however, any comparable response in the behavior of political actors may be of considerable normative account. Scientific enquiry -- whether in the form of formal analysis or of the application of empirical tests to relevant hypotheses -- may, in using the homo economicus construct to "explain" the workings of political processes, tend to further the notion that the behavior so modeled is the norm. ... Suppose, for example, that a public choice economist or political scientist is asked to talk to a group of young persons in training for employment in the bureaucracy. ... B. Illusion and the Citizen To this point, we have focused on the possible feedback effects that public choice ideas may exercise on the behavior of "professionals" in the political process -- effects that may well be judged undesirable by common normative standards. ...   HIGHLIGHT: Cynical descriptive conclusions about behavior in government threaten to undermine the norm prescribing public spirit. The cynicism of journalists -- and even the writings of professors -- can decrease public spirit simply by describing what they claim to be its absence. Cynics are therefore in the business of making prophecies that threaten to become self-fulfilling. If the norm of public spirit dies, our society would look bleaker and our lives as individuals would be more impoverished. That is the tragedy of "public choice." Steven Kelman, "Public Choice" and Public Spirit 1 TEXT:  [*179]  PUBLIC choice analysis -- the application of the theoretical method and techniques of modern economics to the study of political processes -- has come increasingly to popular attention in recent years. The 1986 Nobel Prize in economics is both a reflection of that increased attention and an occasion for it. It is only to be expected that such attention would focus on the simpler and/or more controversial aspects of public choice theory. In a sense, this is what "good press" is all about. It is more surprising, and to some extent regrettable, that some of the allegedly "academic" evaluations have been similarly focused. It has to be conceded that public choice theory is controversial, and not just because some of its predictions are counterintuitive or its methods of analysis unusual; the controversy goes well beyond the "scientific" level. There is an apparent accompanying conviction  [*180]  on the part of many commentators that the whole enterprise is immoral in a basic sense. Steven Kelman's discussion reveals this position nicely, as the initial quotation suggests. But Kelman's position is by no means unique. 2 It merely takes up an anxiety that has been aired on and off by orthodox welfare economists and mainstream political scientists ever since the public choice revolution began. 3 To some extent, this anxiety is based on a misconception. Public choice theory has been widely touted as being defined by the attribution of homo economicus motivations to actors in their political roles. Homo economicus -- the wealth-maximizing egoist -- should be seen to play no more significant a role in public choice analysis than in the whole program of economic theory more generally. And it is simply wrong to conceive of economics as nothing more than egoistic psychology. Also, as we have argued, there may be good reason to believe that homo economicus may be descriptively somewhat less relevant in the political setting than in economic markets. 4 The more appropriate use of the homo economicus construction is to further the normative exercise of investigating the incentive structures embodied in various institutional forms 5 rather than the descriptive exercise of providing predictions as to the likely outcomes of political interactions. But definitions of public choice are, for the purposes of the argument here, somewhat beside the point. In fact, Kelman's anxiety is ultimately independent of whether political agents can be accurately described by egoistic motivations. Whatever the reality, the logic of Kelman's claim is that the responsible political analyst should err on the side of the heroic. If cynicism destroys politically  [*181]  useful illusions, then equally romanticism within limits fosters those illusions. This aspect of Kelman's argument is then not an argument for science but an argument for illusion. It is an argument designed to supply additional weight to, over and above any descriptive scientific critique of, the homo economicus postulate. To this substantive charge we must, of course, plead guilty at least to this extent: although we do not believe that narrow self-interest is the sole motive of political agents, or that it is necessarily as relevant a motive in political as in market settings, we certainly believe it to be a significant motive. This differentiates our approach from the alternative model, implicit in conventional welfare economics and widespread in conventional political science, that political agents can be satisfactorily modeled as motivated solely to promote the "public interest," somehow conceived. That model we, along with all our public choice colleagues, categorically reject. In doing so, however, whatever the scientific imperatives, we have to reckon with the moral implications. That is our object here -- to investigate the substance of the morally based critique of public choice. To do this properly, it is useful to set the empirical/scientific issues on one side: We shall take our critics seriously on their own terms, and examine the purely ethical case against public choice scholarship. Two related questions seem relevant to this ethical critique. The first deals with the consequences of public choice models for the actual or imputed behavior of persons as they act in political roles. To the extent that public choice analysis influences the behavior of political agents, is this behavioral response desirable? There are, in turn, two distinct dimensions to this first question. One involves the behavior of politicians/bureaucrats -- those who exercise discretionary power within the given political order. The other involves the attribution of legitimacy by the citizen to that political order, and leads to the more general question of its stability and possibly to the feasibility of any long-term political order at all. Beyond this, there is the second question of whether public choice may not be "immoral" simply by virtue of its dispelling illusions about the nature of the political order, quite independent of any of its political consequences. The final section of the paper will be devoted to what we may call a "moral defense" of public choice. As we shall argue, however,  [*182]  this defense depends on a prior specification of the purpose of public choice analysis -- one that may not be endorsed, even if it is understood, by all our professional colleagues in public choice itself. I. THE BEHAVIORAL CONSEQUENCES OF PUBLIC CHOICE A. Potential Effect on Political Actors One of this century's scientific advances has been the recognition that what is being observed may be influenced by the fact of observation. Problems emerge from this source in all sciences; they appear in many guises and have many ramifications. In this respect, however, there is an important distinction between the human and nonhuman sciences. In the nonhuman sciences, the interactions are restricted to those between the observer and observed. John Kagel and his colleagues must take into account how their own behavior might influence the behavior of the rats they study. 6 But they need not worry at all about the influence of their research on the behavior of other rats. Other rats do not read or understand economists' conversations about rats; the behavior of those other rats will remain totally unaffected by the reporting of the results of the experiments or by new analyses "explaining" such results to economists. In the human sciences, no strict boundary between individuals who are observed and those who are not can be drawn for such purposes. Persons read research reports; they listen to social scientists talk about experiments; they understand and interpret models of behavior imputed to others of their species. And this fact matters scientifically to the extent that the reading of such reports and the consequent changes in people's understanding of themselves influence human behavior. It matters normatively to the extent that those changes in behavior have morally relevant consequences. Second, and somewhat more subtly, ideas may change values themselves. Two examples may help here. Suppose that some Kinsey-like report has revealed that, in fact, over seventy percent of  [*183]  married couples in the United States indulge in some sexual practice commonly believed to be decidedly eccentric and perhaps morally somewhat dubious. It seems plausible to suggest that the release of this information may serve to change sexual standards in the direction of this practice: the "facts" somehow serve to legitimize the practice. The charge that "everyone does it" is normally regarded as at least a presumptive argument in favor of "doing it" oneself. As a second example within social science itself, one might hazard the conjecture that economists (at least those with a strong "price theory" orientation) are more likely to act like the homo economicus model they work with than are others not blessed with the "economist's way of thinking." This involves, in many cases, not only a greater attentiveness to the costs and benefits of alternative actions (particularly the financially measurable ones), but also a sort of cultivated hard-nosed crassness towards anything that smacks of the "higher things of life." Suppose that we acknowledge this possibility -- that analysis of social interactions in homo economicus terms influences individuals toward behaving more in the way persons are modeled to behave. In the context of well-functioning markets, this prospect may be of little normative concern. Within the market, self-interested behavior, given the appropriate legal constraints, does not necessarily inhibit "social interest" and may indeed further it. In this institutional setting, any legitimizing of self-interest that economic theory provides need have no moral consequences of any significance. In extending the application of the homo economicus model to political contexts, however, any comparable response in the behavior of political actors may be of considerable normative account. Scientific enquiry -- whether in the form of formal analysis or of the application of empirical tests to relevant hypotheses -- may, in using the homo economicus construct to "explain" the workings of political processes, tend to further the notion that the behavior so modeled is the norm. To the critics, the very structure of enquiry here may serve to legitimze such behavior for those who exercise discretionary power in political roles. Voters, lobbyists, politicians and bureaucrats may face reduced public expectations of their behavior -- standards of public life will be eroded, and persons in these roles may predictably lower their own standards in response. Such moral constraints as do apply to political behavior will be  [*184]  reduced by the spread of the conception that most persons, when in such roles, seek only private interest, and that such behavior is all that can reasonably be expected. However, because there is no invisible hand operative in majoritarian political institutions analogous to that operative in the market setting, any lapse in political morality is of normative significance. Even if the explanatory power of public choice models of politics is acknowledged, therefore, the moral spillovers of such models on the behavior of political actors may be deemed to be so important as to negate any purely "scientific" advance made in our understanding of how politics actually works. The maintenance of the standards of public life, it could be argued, may require a heroic vision of the "statesman" or "public servant," because only by holding such a vision can the possibility of public-interested behavior on the part of political agents be increased. The empirical evidence may suggest that any such vision remains decidedly utopian, yet the effects on the morality of those who occupy positions of political power may still be held to override all such factual evidence. Hence, so the argument would go, those who engage in the ideas of politics must preserve a calculated hypocrisy about the conduct of political affairs, and they must talk only in terms of "ideal types." They must explicitly eschew the dull "scientific" talk of sordid realities; they must lift their gaze to the "good, beautiful, and true." The consequences for a tolerably acceptable political life in failing to keep this essential faith become potentially disastrous. This argument deserves to be taken seriously, despite its apparent vulnerability to caricature when viewed from the "scientific" perspective. Moreover, we think that at some subliminal level, the force of the argument is well recognized. Suppose, for example, that a public choice economist or political scientist is asked to talk to a group of young persons in training for employment in the bureaucracy. On what aspects of public choice would he or she focus? On explaining how to manipulate agendas? On showing how to maximize the size of an agency's budget? The public choice analyst would probably soft-pedal the cynical edges, and focus more on the prospects for institutional reform than on the maximization of career prospects. More generally, consider the role of the public choice analyst in a setting where no change in the structure of political organization  [*185]  is considered to be possible. In this case, the only possible impact on policy outcomes lies in powers of persuasion over people who hold positions of political power. If all such persons are self-interested wealth-maximizers, the entire raison d'etre of proffering policy advice collapses. Those who either actually or putatively offer advice to politicians must model their targets as something other than wealth-maximizers. We should hardly be surprised, therefore, when our political-establishment colleagues (indeed all those who do not understand, or have no taste for, the prospect of institutional reform) treat public choice as the heresy it is for their own church. B. Illusion and the Citizen To this point, we have focused on the possible feedback effects that public choice ideas may exercise on the behavior of "professionals" in the political process -- effects that may well be judged undesirable by common normative standards. The recognition of such consequences does not, of course, carry direct implications for the pursuit of scientific enquiry. But scientific enquiry embodies its own moral values -- a belief in the value of knowledge for its own sake and predisposition towards the view that science is, on balance, "productive." In certain contexts, the importance of these values may be debatable. We may agree that public choice analysis allows us to see politics without blinders. In that sense, we play the role of the boy who called attention to the emperor's nakedness. But the familiar story might be given quite a different twist if it went on to relate that the emperor fell into disgrace, that the nobles fought among themselves, that the previously stable political order crumbled into chaos, and that the kingdom was destroyed. The moral might then have been not that one should call a spade a spade, whatever the possible consequences, but rather that a sensitivity to consequences may require one to be judicious in exposing functionally useful myths. In this argument, there are echoes of the Hobbesian concern about the precariousness of stable political order. Cynicism about the behavior of political agents, however empirically justified it may be, may wreak damage to the "civic religion." This is a danger that any enquiry into political arrangements must acknowledge. As scientists, we consider it our purpose to destroy myths. But we  [*186]  should recognize that the "myths of democracy" may be essential to maintenance of an underlying popular consent of the citizenry to be governed, in the absence of which no tolerable stable political order is possible. The late-1981 action in which, by an amendment to a totally different piece of legislation, members of Congress substantially reduced their income tax liability 7 exemplifies the problem in a practical way. This action will surely induce ordinary taxpayers everywhere to become less moral in their own behavior vis-a-vis the Internal Revenue Service. In the United States, income tax arrangements continue to depend in large measure on taxpayer honesty -- a dependence that makes effective income taxation infeasible in many countries. Public choice theory, in itself, does not induce politicians to behave as tax avoiders: it is not responsible for the recent tax change. But the theory does hold such cases up as being of the essential nature of political process, rather than an unfortunate and regrettable lapse. Public choice theory gives coherence and meaning to such events by providing an understanding of political process in the light of them. And this sort of understanding is not conducive to taxpayer honesty or to the good functioning of stable government, more generally. As any good public choice theorist recognizes, some discretionary political power will remain in the hands of some political agents even under the best of feasible institutional arrangements: constraints are costly, and we must make the best of what we have. Economists are familiar with the proposition that not all "problems" are problems -- that resources are limited, including "resources" of good will, altruism, honesty, and the like. In a world where political institutions were "optimal" in some sense, what useful purpose would it serve to destroy popular illusions about those institutions? There is, of course, an aspect of the myth-destruction exercise that goes beyond the possible destruction of civic order. That is the more direct question of the ethics of destroying illusions -- even when there is no behavioral response. As Eugene O'Neill's The Iceman  [*187]  Cometh 8 emphasizes, the destruction of illusion in and of itself without the offering of hope may be grossly immoral: it directly reduces individuals' perceived levels of welfare. The moral considerations involved in informing someone who has an incurable cancer of his condition, or in informing the recently bereaved and grieving widower that his wife had been hav