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The Calculus Of Consent
''The Calculus of Consent: Logical Foundations of Constitutional Democracy'' is a book published by economists James M. Buchanan and Gordon Tullock in 1962. It is considered to be one of the classic works from the discipline of public choice in economics and political science. This work presents the basic principles of public choice theory. Overview The analytical approach of the authors is based on ''methodological individualism'' - collective action is composed of individual actions and on the rejection of any organic interpretation of the state. A purely individualistic conception of collectivity is maintained: the state is an artifact, created by men and thus subject to change and perfection. Buchanan and Tullock maintain that only constitutional changes, which can be shown to be in the interest of all interested parties, can be judged as "improvements" and therefore consider conceptual unanimity as the only legitimate decision-making rule. The authors analyze the traditional ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Book
A book is a medium for recording information in the form of writing or images, typically composed of many pages (made of papyrus, parchment, vellum, or paper) bound together and protected by a cover. The technical term for this physical arrangement is '' codex'' (plural, ''codices''). In the history of hand-held physical supports for extended written compositions or records, the codex replaces its predecessor, the scroll. A single sheet in a codex is a leaf and each side of a leaf is a page. As an intellectual object, a book is prototypically a composition of such great length that it takes a considerable investment of time to compose and still considered as an investment of time to read. In a restricted sense, a book is a self-sufficient section or part of a longer composition, a usage reflecting that, in antiquity, long works had to be written on several scrolls and each scroll had to be identified by the book it contained. Each part of Aristotle's ''Physics'' is called a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Health Care
Health care or healthcare is the improvement of health via the prevention, diagnosis, treatment, amelioration or cure of disease, illness, injury, and other physical and mental impairments in people. Health care is delivered by health professionals and allied health fields. Medicine, dentistry, pharmacy, midwifery, nursing, optometry, audiology, psychology, occupational therapy, physical therapy, athletic training, and other health professions all constitute health care. It includes work done in providing primary care, secondary care, and tertiary care, as well as in public health. Access to health care may vary across countries, communities, and individuals, influenced by social and economic conditions as well as health policies. Providing health care services means "the timely use of personal health services to achieve the best possible health outcomes". Factors to consider in terms of health care access include financial limitations (such as insurance coverage), geo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Qualified Majority Voting
The procedures for voting in the Council of the European Union are described in the treaties of the European Union. The Council of the European Union (or simply "Council" or "Council of Ministers") has had its voting procedure amended by subsequent treaties and currently operates on the system set forth in the Treaty of Lisbon. The system is known as qualified majority voting. Current qualified majority voting rules (since 2014) Article 16 of the Treaty on European Union, as amended by the Treaty of Lisbon, stipulates that the Council voting arrangements of the Nice Treaty applied until 31 October 2014. Article 16 also states the conditions for a qualified majority, effective since 1 November 2014 (Lisbon rules): * Majority of countries: 55% (comprising at least 15 of them), or 72% if acting on a proposal from neither the Commission nor from the High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, High Representative, and * Majority of population: 65%. A ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Collective Action
Collective action refers to action taken together by a group of people whose goal is to enhance their condition and achieve a common objective. It is a term that has formulations and theories in many areas of the social sciences including psychology, sociology, anthropology, political science and economics. The social identity model Researchers Martijn van Zomeren, Tom Postmes, and Russell Spears conducted a meta-analysis of over 180 studies of collective action, in an attempt to integrate three dominant socio-psychological perspectives explaining antecedent conditions to this phenomenon – injustice, efficacy, and identity. In their resultant 2008 review article, an integrative Social Identity Model of Collective Action (SIMCA) was proposed which accounts for interrelationships among the three predictors as well as their predictive capacities for collective action. An important assumption of this approach is that people tend to respond to subjective states of disadvantage, whi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Income Redistribution
Redistribution of income and wealth is the transfer of income and wealth (including physical property) from some individuals to others through a social mechanism such as taxation, welfare, public services, land reform, monetary policies, confiscation, divorce or tort law. The term typically refers to redistribution on an economy-wide basis rather than between selected individuals. Interpretations of the phrase vary, depending on personal perspectives, political ideologies and the selective use of statistics. It is frequently used in politics, where it is used to refer to perceived redistribution from those who have more to those who have less. Occasionally, however, the term is used to describe laws or policies that cause redistribution in the opposite direction, from the poor to the rich. The phrase is often coupled with the term ''class warfare'', with high-income earners and the wealthy portrayed as victims of unfairness and discrimination. Redistribution tax policy should ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Majority Rule
Majority rule is a principle that means the decision-making power belongs to the group that has the most members. In politics, majority rule requires the deciding vote to have majority, that is, more than half the votes. It is the binary decision rule used most often in influential decision-making bodies, including many legislatures of democratic nations. Distinction with plurality Decision-making in a legislature is different from election of representation, although the result of plurality (First Past the Post or FPTP) elections is often mistaken for majority rule. Plurality elections elect the option that has more votes than any other, regardless of whether the fifty percent threshold is passed. A plurality election produces representation of a majority when there are only two candidates in an election or, more generally, when there are only two options. However, when there are more than two alternatives, a candidate that has less than fifty percent of the votes cast in ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Simple Majority Voting
Majority rule is a principle that means the decision-making power belongs to the group that has the most members. In politics, majority rule requires the deciding vote to have majority, that is, more than half the votes. It is the binary decision rule used most often in influential decision-making bodies, including many legislatures of democratic nations. Distinction with plurality Decision-making in a legislature is different from election of representation, although the result of plurality (First Past the Post or FPTP) elections is often mistaken for majority rule. Plurality elections elect the option that has more votes than any other, regardless of whether the fifty percent threshold is passed. A plurality election produces representation of a majority when there are only two candidates in an election or, more generally, when there are only two options. However, when there are more than two alternatives, a candidate that has less than fifty percent of the votes cast in ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Unanimity
Unanimity is agreement by all people in a given situation. Groups may consider unanimous decisions as a sign of social, political or procedural agreement, solidarity, and unity. Unanimity may be assumed explicitly after a unanimous vote or implicitly by a lack of objections. It does not necessarily mean uniformity and can sometimes be the opposite of majority in terms of outcomes. Voting Practice varies as to whether a vote can be considered unanimous if some voter abstains. In ''Robert's Rules of Order'', a "unanimous vote" is not specifically defined, although an abstention is not counted as a vote regardless of the voting threshold. Also in this book, action could be taken by "unanimous consent", or "general consent", if there are no objections raised. However, unanimous consent may not necessarily be the same as a unanimous vote (see Not the same as unanimous vote). In either case, it does not take into account the members who were not present. In contrast, a United Natio ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Constitutional Economics
Constitutional economics is a research program in economics and constitutionalism that has been described as explaining the choice "of alternative sets of legal-institutional-constitutional rules that constrain the choices and activities of economic and political agents". This extends beyond the definition of "the economic analysis of constitutional law" and is distinct from explaining the choices of economic and political agents within those rules, a subject of orthodox economics. Instead, constitutional economics takes into account the impacts of political economic decisions as opposed to limiting its analysis to economic relationships as functions of the dynamics of distribution of marketable goods and services. Constitutional economics was pioneered by the work of James M. Buchanan. He argued that "The political economist who seeks to offer normative advice, must, of necessity, concentrate on the process or structure within which political decisions are observed to be made. Exis ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Social Choice
Social choice theory or social choice is a theoretical framework for analysis of combining individual opinions, preferences, interests, or welfares to reach a ''collective decision'' or ''social welfare'' in some sense.Amartya Sen (2008). "Social Choice,". ''The New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics'', 2nd EditionAbstract & TOC./ref> Whereas choice theory is concerned with individuals making choices based on their preferences, social choice theory is concerned with how to translate the preferences of individuals into the preferences of a group. A non-theoretical example of a collective decision is enacting a law or set of laws under a constitution. Another example is voting, where individual preferences over candidates are collected to elect a person that best represents the group's preferences. Social choice blends elements of welfare economics and public choice theory. It is methodologically individualistic, in that it aggregates preferences and behaviors of individual member ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Rational Choice Theory
Rational choice theory refers to a set of guidelines that help understand economic and social behaviour. The theory originated in the eighteenth century and can be traced back to political economist and philosopher, Adam Smith. The theory postulates that an individual will perform a cost-benefit analysis to determine whether an option is right for them.Gary Browning, Abigail Halcli, Frank Webster (2000). ''Understanding Contemporary Society: Theories of the Present'', London: SAGE Publications. It also suggests that an individual's self-driven rational actions will help better the overall economy. Rational choice theory looks at three concepts: rational actors, self interest and the invisible hand. Rationality can be used as an assumption for the behaviour of individuals in a wide range of contexts outside of economics. It is also used in political science, sociology, and philosophy. Overview The basic premise of rational choice theory is that the decisions made by individual ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Methodological Individualism
In the social sciences, methodological individualism is the principle that subjective individual motivation explains social phenomena, rather than class or group dynamics which are illusory or artificial and therefore cannot truly explain market or social phenomena. This concept was introduced as an assumption in the social sciences by Max Weber, and discussed in his book ''Economy and Society''. Methodological individualism is often contrasted with methodological holism and methodological pluralism. In economics In neoclassical economics, people's behavior is explained in terms of rational choices as constrained by prices and incomes. The neoclassical economist accepts individuals' preferences as given. Gary Becker and George Stigler provide a forceful statement of this view: :On the traditional view, an explanation of economic phenomena that reaches a difference in tastes between people or times is the terminus of the argument: the problem is abandoned at this point to wh ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
