Historians of economic thought are paying greater attention to issues of social ontology (that is, to the assumptions that economists make about the nature of social reality). In this paper, we contribute to this burgeoning literature by exploring the hitherto neglected way in which James...

Buchanan mentions at several points in his oeuvre the necessary role for a ‘constitutional attitude' – at the individual (‘the private man') and social level (‘the public man'). Buchanan's constitutional attitude is both explanatory and evaluative; it explains why citizens value liberty...