Showing posts with label Gordon C. Rausser and Pinhas Zusman. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Gordon C. Rausser and Pinhas Zusman. Show all posts

Public Policy and Constitutional Prescription

Author(s): Gordon C. Rausser and Pinhas Zusman

In public policy analysis, much confusion exists about the roles of explanation and prescription. To offer a new perspective, a paradigm is developed that gives both theoretical and empirical meaning to the constitutional determination of political preference functions or public sector governance structures. Current policies are viewed as a rational outcome of a political-economic process. Three relevant spaces are specified: result, policy instrument, and constitutional. For the policy instrument space, the paradigm provides a framework for generating testable propositions on government behavior, while, for the constitutional space, the framework is prescriptive. The collective-choice rules of the constitutional space structure the tradeoff between public and special interests. 
Key words: constitutional economics, governance structures, political preference function, public interest, public policy, special interest.