James M. Buchanan articulated a unique defense of the existence of the state. He identifies his individualist, constitutionalist, contractarian, democratic, and even philosophical anarchist impulses as being essentially the same. Other theorists have been concerned with the ideal political structure. Buchanan, instead, rejects the search for “truth in politics” and is primarily concerned with what might legitimate a state in the existent, imperfect world. His approach involves a typical contractarian move of separating the legitimacy of the constitutional order from the determination of day-to-day policy, but his subsequent argument for accepting the initial distribution of rights and then bargaining over rules bears the mark of the economic way of thinking. Major themes in his argument include the necessity of multiple layers of analysis, the normative ideal of unanimity, taking individuals’ preferences as given, and special attention to the costs of collective decision making. This sets him apart from other contractarians who idealize their contractors, sometimes to the point of making true bargaining and exchange impossible or irrelevant, as well as from other normative individualists who would seek to correct pre-constitutional injustices
Chapter 7 · Abstract