Anarchy, State and Public Choice
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Anarchy, State and Public Choice

9781845422400 Edward Elgar Publishing
Edited by Edward Stringham, Trinity College, US
Publication Date: 2005 ISBN: 978 1 84542 240 0 Extent: 240 pp
The book reprints the main articles from the 1972 volume Explorations in the Theory of Anarchy, and contains a response to each chapter, as well as new comments by Gordon Tullock, James Buchanan, Jeffrey Rogers Hummel and Peter Boettke. The younger economists are notably less pessimistic about markets and more pessimistic about government than their predecessors. Much of the new analysis suggests that private property rights and contracts can exist without government, and that even though problems exist, government does not seem to offer a solution. Might anarchy be the best choice after all? This provocative volume explores this issue in-depth and provides some interesting answers.

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Critical Acclaim
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Although most people believe that some form of government is necessary, until recently it was merely an assumption that had never been analyzed from an economic point of view. This changed in the 1970s when economists at the Center for the Study of Public Choice engaged in a systematic exploration of the issue. This stimulating collection, the first book-length treatment on the public choice theory of government, continues and extends the research program begun more than three decades ago.

The book reprints the main articles from the 1972 volume Explorations in the Theory of Anarchy, and contains a response to each chapter, as well as new comments by Gordon Tullock, James Buchanan, Jeffrey Rogers Hummel and Peter Boettke. The younger economists are notably less pessimistic about markets and more pessimistic about government than their predecessors. Much of the new analysis suggests that private property rights and contracts can exist without government, and that even though problems exist, government does not seem to offer a solution. Might anarchy be the best choice after all? This provocative volume explores this issue in-depth and provides some interesting answers.

Economists, political scientists, philosophers and lawyers interested in public choice, political economy and spontaneous order will find this series of essays illuminating.
Critical Acclaim
‘The collection is well-rounded, including both purely theoretical analyses, as well as contributions with a strong historical and empirical focus. . . This is an excellent collection not only for all those interested in the question of whether anarchy constitutes a feasible option that is superior to statist societies, but also for those interested in understanding how many real-world interactions do take place in the absence of effective third-party enforcement.’
– Ralf M. Bader, Economic Affairs

‘This is an excellent book. Edward Stringham has collected a set of very helpful essays exploring the economics of bottom-up social organization of anarchy.’
– Review of Austrian Economics
Contributors
Contributors: S. Beaulier, P.J. Boettke, J.M. Buchanan, W. Bush, C. Coyne, J.P. Gunning, T. Hogarty, J.R. Hummel, P.T. Leeson, L. Moss, J. Osborne, B. Powell, W. Samuels, V. Storr, E. Stringham, G. Tullock
Contents
Contents:
1. Introduction
Edward Stringham
2. Individual Welfare in Anarchy
Winston Bush
3. Jungle or Just Bush? Anarchy and the Evolution of Cooperation
Jason Osborne
4. The Edge of the Jungle
Gordon Tullock
5. Social Interaction without the State
Christopher Coyne
6. Towards a Theory of the Evolution of Government
J. Patrick Gunning
7. Do Contracts Require Formal Enforcement?
Peter T. Leeson
8. Before Public Choice
James M. Buchanan
9. Public Choice and Leviathan
Benjamin Powell
10. Cases in Anarchy
Thomas Hogarty
11. Defining Anarchy as Rock-n-Roll: Rethinking Hogarty’s Three Cases
Virgil Storr
12. Private Property Anarchism: An American Variant
Laurence Moss
13. Anarchism and the Theory of Power
Warren Samuels
14. Polycentrism and Power
Scott Beaulier
15. Reflections After Three Decades
James M. Buchanan
16. Anarchy
Gordon Tullock
17. Tullock on Anarchy
Jeffrey Rogers Hummel
18. Anarchism as a Progressive Research Program in Political Economy
Peter J. Boettke
Index
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