James Buchanan

James Buchanan (1919-2013) was awarded the Nobel Prize in Economics in 1986 for his synthesis of market economics and political democracy. A libertarian, a contractarian, a constitutionalist, Buchanan saw the social world as a network of individuals revealing preferences and negotiating exchanges. Self-interest that might otherwise have led to the war of each against all is channelled into the division of labour and capitalism by consent.

Trade gives rational individuals the opportunity to increase each other's felt well-being. Gain-seeking anarchy is the economist's utopia but still a protective State is needed to ensure that agreements are honoured and the rules obeyed. Buchanan made himself a missionary for binding agreements and good rules.

Without them, he warned, we would surely fight. Using morals when other economists used mathematics, Buchanan argued a market economist's case for tolerance of diversity, unanimity of consensus and uncompromising respect. This book, James Buchanan, seeks to explain and evaluate the thought-provoking insights of a prolific and original thinker who enriched the ethical aspirations of a frequently dismal science.