自1960年起, 經濟學者向政治、法律和社會等領域擴充, 都得到豐碩的成果。就政治學的範
圍而言,Buchanan和Tullock利用經濟學的分析架構, 探討政治過程裡的現象; 不僅創立了公
共選擇這個研究領域, 還對傳統政治學產生了重大的影響。
Public Choice

Economists have moved into areas traditionally reserved for other disciplines
since the 1960s and have produced significant contributions. For instance,
Becker has studied the issues as generally viewed to be the domain of
sociologists, and Posner has helped to establish the thriving field of law and
economics. Among the outward expansions, the move into the area of political
science has been one of the most successful endeavors. The application of
economic analysis to studying the political process has made Public Choice a
thriving field, as can be verified by the fact that in the textbooks of
economics principles a chapter on the subject is now a generally accepted practice.

Specifically the field of Public Choice was launched by the efforts of Buchanan,
Tullock, Mueller, Niskanan, among others, and the treatise of 《The Calculus of
Consent》 has become a classic in both economics and the political science. Based
on the simple idea of methodological individualism, Buchanan and Tullock set out
to study political process with the assumptions that individuals are rational
and self-interested, in both the economic sphere and the political domain. They
employ what can be termed a “cost approach” to study how individuals would
choose rules to deal with issues in the public domain.

Of particular relevance to the course is the distinction between constitutional
politics and day-to-day politics. The former concerns the basic constitutional
structure of a society while the latter focuses on the daily operations of the
political process given the constitutional framework. While the distinction has
been well developed by the public choice scholarship, it is, however, not in the
vocabulary of the discourse about politics in Taiwan. As such issues related to
the distinction will be discussed in class and the students will be encouraged
to write commentaries and to try to publish the commentaries in the local
newspapers. In a sense it is to participate in discussions of issues the society
faces, and it is also of importance as to have a good command of the analytical
framework as developed by the public choice scholars, with Buchanan and Tullock
as two towering figures in the intellectual endeavor.

It is true that the field of public choice has developed rapidly since the 1960s
and it would be impractical to cover all the relevant topics now under the
banner of Public Choice. However, it is important to have a basic grasp of the
core elements of this discipline. In addition to the textbook by Buchanan and
Tullock, selective current literature will be explained in class. Also, the
students will be encouraged to try to relate the basic analytical concepts to
examining the current political scene in Taiwan. As constitutional amendments
are an important subject in Taiwan that will have long-term impact, various
aspects about the constitutional amendment process will be discussed in class.
The goal is certainly not to find the right answer or right solutions for
Taiwan’s constitutional structure, but to sharpen the analysis as well as to
have a clear hold of the public choice perspective in analyzing the political
process.

The course will adopt the classic by Buchanan and Tullock as the main text,
accompanied by a book of collected short essays. It is required that one chapter
each from the two books will be read by the students before the weekly meetings.
The students will be organized in groups of three to prepare for the weekly
meetings. The groups will provide notes that summarize the contents of the books
and raise issues to be discussed in class. The notes will be sent to the
students a few days before the class so the students would have time to think
about the issues raised. In addition to the reading assignments, the students
will write, in groups, a few short essays as homework to deal with both
theoretical questions as well as practical political phenomena that they
currently observe. At the end of the semester, each student will write an essay
for about 4000 words in length to deal with an issue that is related to the course.

The students are encouraged to participate in and contribute to the discussions
in class. And they are encouraged to write commentaries to be published in the
op-page in local newspapers, as an active participation to the discourse of
public policies. Those who are successful in publishing their commentaries in
the newspapers will be given additional credits for their grades. The course is
suitable for third and fourth year undergraduates and graduate students.

Now a few words about the textbooks are in order. The first one, as indicated
previously is the influential classic of 《The Calculus of Consent》, by Buchanan
and Tullock, published in 1962. The book has 20 chapters and two very
informative appendices illustrating the major intellectual sources of the
arguments made in the book. While reading the English text might be a bit tight
for some students—about 25-35 pages each week, it is strongly advised that the
students should not rely on the Chinese translation, as there are significant
losses resulting from the translation process.

The second textbook is a collection of short essays covering various topics,
grouped into 14 chapters with each chapter containing about three to four short
essays. The students are required to study one chapter each week and then
explore the related issues as covered by the short essays. Specifically, in
reading the chapters the students are advised to ask themselves two questions:
First, what does the author want to say in the essays? Secondly, do you agree
with the author or not? And regardless of the answer to the second question,
what is your reasoning in answering the question?