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Public Policy and Constitutional Prescription
Author(s) -
Rausser Gordon C.,
Zusman Pinhas
Publication year - 1992
Publication title -
american journal of agricultural economics
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.949
H-Index - 111
eISSN - 1467-8276
pISSN - 0002-9092
DOI - 10.2307/1242479
Subject(s) - politics , government (linguistics) , meaning (existential) , public policy , space (punctuation) , corporate governance , preference , confusion , political science , law and economics , public choice , outcome (game theory) , public administration , public economics , positive economics , economics , epistemology , computer science , mathematical economics , microeconomics , law , psychology , philosophy , linguistics , finance , psychoanalysis , operating system
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.