The theory of the public choices is a discipline of the economy which describes the role of the State and the behavior of the voters, politicians and civils servant. She thus intends to apply the economic theory to the Political science. The text founder of this current is The Calculus off Authorizes published in 1962 by James Mr. Buchanan (“Nobel Prize” of economy 1986) and Gordon Tullock.

The policy is explained there using the tools developed by the Microéconomie. The politicians and civils servant act as the consumers and producers of the economic theory would do it, in a different institutional context: inter alia difference, the money in question is generally not theirs (cf the Problème main thing-agent). The motivation of the political personnel is to maximize his own interest, which includes the collective interest (at least, such as they can conceive it), but not only. Thus, the politicians wish to maximize their chances to be elected or re-elected, and the civils servant wish to maximize to them Utilité (returned, to be able, etc)

In addition cognitive and emotional skews suitable for the behavioral economy which one notes on the level of the Marché also find on the level of the public decisions, whereas they are subjected there to natural self-correcting mechanisms.

A new vision of the role of the State

Before the emergence of the School of the public choices, the majority of the economists represented the State like a idealized being, that the economic theory could not describe, because their choices would not depend on the same reasons to act as the economic agents. (A notable exception is Vilfredo Pareto.)

On the basis of the principle that the politicians and the civils servant are consequently motivated research of the personal interest which founds the neo-classic analysis , the theory of the public choices supposes that they then seek to maximize to them personal Utilité (utility which can contain components more complex than simply their income: collective interest, the altruism, the research of the capacity, etc). It uses then the tools of the neo-classic analysis to explain the process of decision making political, in order to expose the systematic drifts in favor of gaspilleuses policies.

The classical economics seeks to know which policies would be most effective if they were implemented. In contrast, this branch concentrates on the question of knowing which decisions are likely the most to be taken being given the political context, and thus, in the second time, how to make so that the most effective policies gain the best chances to be implemented (how to choose well the politicians and the civils servant, which system of sanction and rewards to envisage, etc).

Rational indifference

One of the conclusions of the theory of the public choices is that the democracies produce less “good” decisions that the optimum, because of the ignorance and the indifference rational of the voters. Indeed, no singular voter can expect that its voice has a significant weight on the result of the elections, while the required effort to get information in order to vote in all knowledge is, him, considerable. Thus, the rational choice of the voter is to remain in ignorance, to even abstain from (the experts speak about the irrationality of the vote ). The theory thus explains the massive ignorance of the electorate, a fortiori the rate of abstention generally noted.

The political good decisions can be regarded as a Public property for the majority of the voters, since they profit from it though they make, and that they do not deprive anybody of it of other. However, there exists a great number of factions or private interests which could draw an advantage by obliging the government to adopt generally harmful decisions, but advantageous for them. For example, the industrialists of the Textile can have interest to make prohibit the imports at low prices, which would enable them to obtain a Rente. The cost of such a protectionist measurement is found diffused in the whole of the population, and the damage undergone by each voter is invisible so much it is tiny. The benefit, them, are shared by a small minority, whose major concern then becomes to make perdurer this type of decision. The theory of the public choices explains thus that many harmful decisions in the majority will be made nevertheless. She speaks about failure of the State , like mirror of the expression " Failure of the market " usually employed in public economy.

By more precisely studying the political redistribution, and the way in which its essential violence, by déresponsabilisant the decision makers like their victims, distorts the perception of its nature and its effects, a theory of the tax illusion can explain the differences between what the economic theory can know of the real effects of the economic policies and the idea, almost always false, which into present the public debate.

The theory of the public choices like explanation of the conjonctural policies

Nordhaus (1970), in the context of the years 1970 (arbitration inflation-unemployment), seeks to envisage which type of policies of the economic situation will be selected in a stylized democratic system, according to the electoral cycle: with the approach of the elections, the governments are tempted to create inflation (cause a drop in the level of short-term unemployment, and to thus gain the elections) which they fight then.

Nordhaus concludes that the democratic systems will choose in the long run a policy of less unemployment and greater inflation than the optimal level, related to the electoral cycle.

This model could also apply directly to other problems of choice, like the public investment, or of the policies of balance of payments.

• assumptions:

- The voter has political preferences (bases ideological, noneconomic impacts of questions, etc), but it modulates his vote according to the results of the economic policies, especially unemployment inflation. Graphically, on a space with two axes (horizontally unemployment, vertically inflation), that makes it possible to plot curves of isovote, each one representing the political combination producing the same result to the governing party. If one supposes, as it seems reasonable, than the voter prefers little unemployment and little inflation, one obtains a series of decreasing monotonous curves isovotes, and more one curve is close to the origin (low inflation and unemployment), plus the party collects votes.

- The voter has only insufficient information on the state of the economy, on the options open to the public decision makers and their consequences, etc He is unaware of, in particular, at the price of which annoying consequences in the future one could be obtained a result which seems good today.

- The parties seek for their part only to garner the greatest possible number of voices to beat their rivals at the time of the next elections. For that, they try to reach the curve of Iso-vote nearest possible to zero, but they are constrained by the possibilities of arbitration dictated by the economy.

- These possibilities economic are represented in the same plan (unemployment, inflation: the same one as for the curves of isovote), by curves of Philips of short term (If) and long run (L). These curves are construction theoretical: at each period, one can measure only the real situation of unemployment and inflation, which complicates the debate: the shape of the curve (even its existence!) remain contestable.

• consequences: balances of short term and long run

The economic curve of long run will be of as much far from the origin (thus electorally bad) that one will have to lower the curve of short term artificially more (thus electorally good); but, contrary, it is electorally profitable to deform the curve of short term to approach a curve of isovote which makes it possible to be elected, even if that causes to degrade the curve of long run.

• the political cycle:

If another assumption is added, according to which the voters less and less remember the events passed, and that the State lays out of means to move, to a certain extent, the good ones and the bad periods, then the program of maximization shows that the political cycle will present the following form:

“Immediately after the election, gaining it will increase unemployment up to a rather high level in order to fight inflation. To the approach of the elections, the level of unemployment will be lowered until reaching a rate which will not hold any account of the inflationary consequences to come. ”

This behavior maximisator led to an evolution in teeth of saw of unemployment rates and inflation. In all the cases, the parts seek to allot the merits from what goes well and to true troubles on others (foreign, left the populations which does not vote/will not vote for him, private sector, preceding government, etc)

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