Choice, Contract, Consent, in restating liberalism, finds its rock-bottom foundations in six first principles that are either self-evident, or readily acceptable to bona fide reason. These simple, relatively undemanding principles dictate the outline of a stable political doctrine. The doctrine is strict, in that it confines the state to mandatory tasks, instead of allowing it discretionary latitude within rules. This is a loose constraint because collective choice can choose its own rules. Political doctrine informs practical politics. In politics, collective choice replace and often overrides individual choice. For this to be legitimate, it does not suffice to respect procedures, such as those demanded by democracy. Collective choice to be morally justified, needs substantive legitimacy too. Choice, Contract, Consent develops the conditions that substantive legitimacy must meet and delineates the restricted class of cases where a liberal government may pre empt the voluntary choices of its citizens.

Choice, Contract, Consent: A Restatement of Liberalism

Politics & Social Sciences

De Jasay, Anthony

Politics & Government

Inst of Economic Affairs

Against Politics (Routledge Studies in Social and Political Thought)

Is the state a necessity, a convenience, or neither? It enforces collective choices in which some override the preferences and dispose of the resources of others. Moreover, collective choice serves as its own source of authority and preempts the space it wishes to occupy. The morality and efficacy of the result are perennial questions central to political philosophy.In Against Politics Jasay takes a closely reasoned stand, based on modern rational choice arguments, for rejecting much of mainstream thought about these matters. In the first part of the book,  Excuses, he assesses the standard justification of government based consent, the power of constitutions to achieve limited government, and ideas for reforming politics. In the second part,  Emergent Solutions , he explores the force of first principles to secure liberties and rights and some of the potential of spontaneous conventions for generating ordered anarchy.Written with clarity and simplicity, this powerful volume represents the central part of Jasay's recent work. Fully accessible to the general reader, it should stimulate the specialist reader to fresh thought.

Against Politics: On Government, Anarchy and Order (Routledge Studies in Social and Political Thought)

Philosophy

Routledge

The State

Blackwell Pub.

Before Resorting to Politics is an original account of liberty and property which questions the morality and utility of political solutions and pleads for a depoliticized society.Anthony de Jasay shows how politics tacitly claims that it is better if one part of society is made to gain at the expense of the other, than if neither part gains or loses. After a withering critique of consequentialism in politics, the author provides an original and terse analysis of liberty, coercion, the role of chance and deserts in the distribution of resources, common pool and private property and the freedom of contract. This essay concludes with a refutation of communitarian and social democratic arguments calling for the state to use its coercive powers.Before Resorting to Politics shows how resorting to politics is a desperate remedy that causes civic cooperation to atrophy. Jasay assigns a new role to logic and ethics in defining the scope for government action.

Before Resorting to Politics (The Shaftesbury Papers series, 5)

Business & Money

Economics

Edward Elgar Publishing

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