public choice theory
Sign in to saveeconomic theory applied to political science
In the Vinony graph
Within Vinony's link graph, public choice theory is referenced by 832 other articles, and connects out to economics, lobbying and advocacy group.
Vinony files it under Political science theories, Public choice theory and Public economics.
Its subject is documented across 34 Wikipedia language editions.
Wikidata facts
- Instance of
- academic discipline
- Subclass of
- theory
Show 4 more facts
- topic's main category
- Category:Public choice theory
- Commons category
- Public choice theory
- different from
- social choice theory
- name in kana
- こうきょうせんたくろん
via Wikidata · CC0
~31 min read
Encyclopedic overview
Public choice, or public choice theory, is "the use of economic tools to deal with traditional problems of political science". It includes the study of political behavior. In political science, it is the subset of positive political theory that studies self-interested agents (voters, politicians, bureaucrats) and their interactions, which can be represented in a number of ways—using (for example) standard constrained utility maximization, game theory, or decision theory. It is the origin and intellectual foundation of contemporary work in political economics.
In popular use, "public choice" is often used as a shorthand for components of modern public choice theory that focus on how elected officials, bureaucrats, and other government agents' perceived self-interest can influence their decisions. Economist James M. Buchanan received the 1986 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences "for his development of the contractual and constitutional bases for the theory of economic and political decision-making".
Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “public choice theory” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.