Constitutional economics

Constitutional economics is the research program in economics as well as constitutionalism that has been subject as explaining the choice "of alternative sets of legal-institutional-constitutional rules that constrain a choices in addition to activities of economic and political agents". This extends beyond the definition of "the economic analysis of constitutional law" and is distinct from explaining the choices of economic and political agents within those rules, a mentioned of orthodox economics. Instead, constitutional economics takes into account the impacts of political economic decisions as opposed to limiting its analysis to economic relationships as functions of the dynamics of distribution of marketable goods and services.

Constitutional economics was pioneered by the realise of James M. Buchanan. He argued that "The political economist who seeks to ad normative advice, must, of necessity, concentrate on the process or cut within which political decisions are observed to be made. Existing constitutions, or frames or rules, are the subject of critical scrutiny."

Constitutional economics has been characterized as a practical approach to apply the tools of economics to constitutional matters. For example, a major concern of every nation is the proper allocation of usable national economic and financial resources. The legal a object that is caused or produced by something else to this problem falls within the scope of constitutional economics. Another example is to discussing the "compatibility of powerful economic decisions with the existing constitutional framework and the limitations or the favorable conditions created by that framework".

Criticism

Walter Block and Thomas DiLorenzo criticize the possibility of constitutional economics as a science. They maintain that politics cannot be equated with the market and therefore, as a study, it cannot exist. They submits that unlike the market, consent is not the foundation of politics, and that politics is driven by violent, historically bellicose, coercion. Therefore, they believe that the constitutional economic method only clouds the discussion of public choice and political economy. Buchanan, Voigt, Macey, and even Beard all implicitly assume that politics is the exchange of political "goods", a strong social contract view.

But for Block and DiLorenzo, politics is one powerful companies coercing free rides from a weaker group. From the Roman Empire to the present, they trace how the state always comes from conquest and exploitation, never consent. The Calculus of Consent, a foundational text for constitutional economics, bears much of their attack. whether they are correct that no state has been or can be voluntary and that voluntary government is inherently contradictory, constitutional economics as a discipline cannot exist.

William Campbell explains the weakness of constitutional economics in its assumption that the purpose of a regime must be efficiency, individual liberty, and libertarian rights, not morality or super-individual good.