This article introduces Buchanan's comment on Tiebout's "A Pure Theory of Local Public Expenditures". It helps us to understand the nature of the relationship between Buchanan and Tiebout. Usually, it is claimed that Buchanan modeled Tiebout's insights, that there exists a Buchanan-Tiebout...

Democratic governments can be either national or federal in form. Whether the form of democracy matters, how it matters if, indeed, it does matter, and for whom it might matter are the types of questions this paper explores. Federalism is generally described as a pro-liberty form of government....

The growth of the 17th century French state contributed to the establishment to a more regular, and even liberal legal order. Higher fiscal demands on the state led to a process of legal standardization that extended the rule of law. We use data on witch trials and taxation covering twenty-one...

Voluntary and coercive relationships among person play important roles in ethics, political theory, and Western law. This essay attempts to clarify the meaning and limits of coercion using matrix representations of voluntary and coercive proposals.Two settings are focused on in this paper: the...

The European Project aims to avoid repeating Europe's bloody history of the first half of the 20th century by creating a united Europe under the banner of the European Union. This aspiration for peace and security recalls the similar effort that led to formation of the United States in the late...

When directives rather than contracts determine rights to water flows, agents will substitute away from securing water rights by contract toward securing them through political directives. When those directives are legitimated by court rulings, they alter the rules that govern social...

This paper analyzes the concept of municipal bankruptcy in a comparative framework with commercial bankruptcy. Cities are corporate bodies that continue to exist despite the ever changing identities of the residents. The common designation of cities as municipal corporations suggests an affinity...

When considered as a unified project, the Ostroms' themes of polycentricity, self-governance, and the art and science of association have strong intellectual roots and connections with Austrian economics. In this paper, we show the close relationship between the Ostroms and the Austrians. We...

Federalism is commonly thought to be a pro-liberty system of government, in contrast to a unitary system. Within a unitary system, people face but a single government that taxes and regulates. Within federal systems, however, people face two or more governments that tax and regulate. In light of...

Elinor Ostrom and her colleagues in The Workshop in Political Theory and Policy Analysis at Indiana University in Bloomington conducted fieldwork in metropolitan police departments across the United States. Their finding in support of community policing dealt a blow to the popular belief that...