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Will New Hampshire Be the First State to Abolish First-Past-the-Post?
A bill to adopt approval voting has been filed in the N.H. House, and one of the co-sponsors is a member of the relevant committee. The bill would establish approval voting for all state offices and...
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Arab States Cursed by Oil?
At Hit & Run, Ron Bailey expresses a surprisingly confident explanation of Arab countries’ economic and political woes: oil. Yes, the resource curse is back in the news. But as longtime readers of...
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Interposition: The Teeth of Federalism: Introduction
The first of a series will begin tomorrow, the Ides of March (the 15th), an appropriate time to initiate an investigation of interposition and federalism in America. On that date in 44 B.C., Julius...
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Interposition: Part One: An Essential Purpose of the States
A rumble can be heard emanating from assemblies and governor’s mansions across these fruited plains. It is a sound reminiscent of by-gone days that echo down through centuries of constitutional...
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Interposition:Part Two: Publius and the Federal Check to National Power
Among the defenders of the Constitution, a great deal was said about the states as a check to the power of the national government that informed the first ideas about interposition. Madison’s...
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Are Americans Underrepresented?
One overlooked electoral reform to decrease the power of special interests in the U.S. political process would be to expand the size of the U.S. House quite significantly, so that legislators cater to...
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Interposition: Part Four: New York and the First Act of Interposition
New York was Hamilton’s great project. So closely divided was the state, that at various moments, he despaired of its coming into the union. At one point the Antifederalists offered a compromise. They...
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Is There Such a Thing as a “Libertarian” Electoral System?
In a few hours, polls open in the United Kingdom for local and devolved elections and for a referendum on moving to a new electoral system, Instant Runoff Voting, which Brits and Aussies insist on...
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Interposition: Part Seven: The Embargo and Noncooperation
With the war in Europe between France and England intensifying, Americans found their rights as neutral traders regularly violated by both French and British navies, and French and British port...
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Multiple Voting in Elections
Take Our Poll At a recent Institute for Humane Studies conference, I had a bit of a debate with Bryan Caplan about the potential popularity of this proposal. In conjunction with this poll, which...
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Interposition: Part Eight: Federalism, Finance and The War of 1812
When tensions with England finally began to degenerate into violent altercations, first on the western frontier in such places as Tippecanoe and later along the Great Lakes, the Madison administration...
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Do Politicians Regulate When They Can’t Spend?
Noel Johnson, Matt Mitchell, and Steve Yamarik have a new working paper answering that question in the affirmative. They look at state fiscal and regulatory policies and find that Democrats generally...
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Stability, Peace, and Poverty
The last issue of The Economist has a feature on “middle-income fragile and failed states” (MIFFs). It compares the World Bank list of countries by development level (high, middle, and low) to the OECD...
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Interposition: Part Nine: The Hartford Convention
Few in power find it convenient to notice inconsistencies in their own conduct. Alas, but President Madison was no exception. Federalism and decentralization exist precisely because free constitutions...
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Do We Want Everyone Represented Equally?
Political scientist John Sides has contributed an interesting guest post to FiveThirtyEight, in which he reviews the evidence that social class influences the way Congresspeople vote. In particular,...
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Boettke, Munger, Leeson, Horwitz, Coyne, Sen, Ostrom, & others on James Buchanan
The latest issue of Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization is dedicated to James Buchanan’s work. Some of the most provocative pieces here include Kliemt on Buchanan as Kantian, Leeson on why...
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Briefly Noted
Libertarianism.org – Finally! A non-technical, one-stop shop for the major ideas in the philosophical tradition of liberty. Cato Institute project. Governance Without a State: Policies and Politics in...
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2011-2012 Not Good for the Regime Uncertainty Thesis
Bob Higgs has used the concept of “regime uncertainty” to explain why the Great Depression lasted so long. In brief, the argument is that FDR’s escalatingly anti-capitalist rhetoric in the mid- to...
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End the Filibuster
Conservatives and liberals are both mad over the Senate’s mundane filibuster compromise. Liberals wanted the filibuster abolished or severely pared back, and conservatives didn’t want any reforms at...
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John Samples on the Filibuster
John Samples at the Cato Institute defends the filibuster: Allowing majority rule to always trump minority interests would undercut the intent and structure of the Constitution, with its many...
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Pay Politicians More?
At Econlog, the very sharp Garett Jones makes an argument for paying politicians more: There’s some evidence that when it comes to politician quality, you get what you pay for; Besley finds that higher...
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Interstate Protectionism and the Dormant Commerce Clause
All 50 states ban the direct sales of motor vehicles from manufacturers to consumers. The politics of this regrettable policy are clear: auto dealers are powerful political players in every state,...
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How Government Shutdowns Grow Government
Following Marc’s great post on congressional dysfunction, I’d like to point how political science tells us that the availability of government shutdowns actually causes the growth of government...
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Evidence Shutdowns Increase Government Spending
A few days ago, I gave the theoretical logic for why the availability of the government shutdown results in growing government spending. Advocates of smaller government should advocate a default budget...
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What Did the President Know and When Did He Know It?
This question, made famous during the Watergate hearings, seems to be the driving question these days, whether one is speaking of the clumsy rollout of the Affordable Care Act, the number of people in...
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WTO Reaches First-Ever Agreement
Twenty years after its establishment, the World Trade Organization finally reached its first global trade deal last night at the meeting of the world’s trade ministers in Bali. The successful agreement...
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Why So Little Decentralization?
Many scholars (for instance) have noted a trend around the world of greater decentralization, at least on certain dimensions. Many non-federal, unitary states have tried to devolve some spending and...
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Why So Little Decentralization? Part Two: Secession Prevention
Having finally turned the corner on a brutal, 11-day (and counting) cold, I feel up to getting back to my blogging routine. First up: a followup to last month’s post, “Why So Little Decentralization?”...
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A Law of Political Entropy?
Libertarians often bemoan the expansion of the federal government over the centuries and cite Thomas Jefferson’s quotation, “The natural progress of things is for liberty to yeild [sic], and government...
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More Evidence on Law of Political Entropy
“Why did the autonomous city-state die?” asks political-economic historian David Stasavage in a new American Political Science Review article. He finds that new autonomous city-states enjoyed higher...
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The Difference Between Governments and States
“The state,” wrote sociologist Max Weber, “is a relation of men dominating men.” I agree. Furthermore, no human being should dominate another human being. Therefore, the state should not exist. But I’m...
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“Fiscal Federalism, Jurisdictional Competition, and the Size of Government”
This paper of mine is now available online in Constitutional Political Economy. It empirically investigates competing theories of how fiscal federalism constrains government. The main conclusion is...
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*The Once and Future King* by F.H. Buckley
Frank Buckley was kind enough to send me a copy of his new book, The Once and Future King: The Rise of Crown Government in America, and now seems like an appropriate time to post my review. Buckley...
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