A strange story echoed in Newsweek suggests that many people have not reflected on how democratic politics works, or perhaps they confuse politics as they think it should be with what it actually is. The magazine writes (“Donald Trump Threatened With New Investigation,” May 11, 2024):
Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, a Rhode Island Democrat, has threatened former President Donald Trump with a new investigation into his reported promises to Big Oil.
The Washington Post reported this week of a deal that Trump, the presumptive GOP presidential nominee, reportedly offered to top oil executives at a Mar-a-Lago dinner last month—raise $1 billion for his campaign and he will reverse dozens of President Joe Biden’s environmental regulations and prevent new rules, according to people with knowledge of the dinner.
According to the Post’s sources, Trump said gifting him $1 billion would be a “deal,” because of the taxation and regulations they wouldn’t have to worry about if he was in office. …
“Put those things together and it starts to look mighty damn corrupt,” Whitehouse said.
In reality, bribes, solicited or offered, are the bread and butter of politicians. They promise political goodies in return for one form of support or another, or they respond to interest groups’ support with favorable interventions. These deals represent the political form of economic exchange, which is why public choice theorists speak of the “political market.”
Joe Biden openly seeks the support of trade union apparatchiks and members in return for “worker-centric” policies. Perhaps Donald Trump is just more transparent. And he plays the game on the side of different special interests—although, as any populist worth his salt, he also tries to bribe workers with tariffs imposed on consumers and on importing businesses. A qualification is needed: a political bribe aimed at extending freedom of contract to everybody equally—which we don’t see very often these days—should not be condemned. It is the system creating this necessity that is condemnable.
Political bribing also occurs when a politician offers a certain class of voters to favor their interests or opinions or sentiments—and they are often the same thing—in exchange for their support for his own interest in the perks of power. Bribing is at the core of majoritarian politics. The consequences for public and private ethics, and for the survival of a free society, are far from insignificant.
The more power the state has, the more widespread such legal corruption becomes. A defining characteristic of the classical liberal and libertarian tradition has been to argue against state power, democratic or not.
James Buchanan, the 1986 Nobel laureate in economics, proposed one way of solution through the “constitutional political economy” that developed on the foundations of public-choice economics. The solution revolves around constitutional limits on day-to-day politics and is precisely meant to stop the negative-sum game of redistribution and exploitation of political losers by political winners. Buchanan and his collaborators argued that it is only at the level of constitutional rules unanimously accepted in a virtual social contract that political exchange can be non-exploitative; at this level (the “constitutional stage”), he argues, politics resembles an economic exchange in everybody’s interest. It is not exploitative because, in theory, any individual can oppose his veto to a system of rules that would have larger costs than benefits for him. (See his The Limits of Liberty, his seminal The Calculus of Consent with Gordon Tullock; and his The Reason of Rules with Geoffrey Brennan; the links are to my reviews of these books.)
The most radical and subversive attack against majoritarian politics from an avowedly liberal viewpoint can be found in the writings of another economist and political philosopher, Anthony de Jasay, including in his appropriately titled book Against Politics (link to my review).
If we wish to round up the picture of the main strands of liberal political philosophy in the 20th century, we might add Friedrich Hayek’s critique of majoritarian democracy. In pursuit of expediency (cost-benefit analysis writ large), democratic politics destroys the traditional rule of law that generated an auto-regulated social order. (See notably his Rules and Order and The Mirage of Social Justice; links to my reviews.)
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Politician bribing the voters he needs to be in power (By Pierre Lemieux and DALL-E)
READER COMMENTS
Richard W Fulmer
May 22 2024 at 10:53am
As Frédéric Bastiat noted, “The state is the great fiction by which everyone tries to live at the expense of everyone else.” Trump had the bad taste to bring Bastiat’s great truth into the light.
steve
May 22 2024 at 12:29pm
Sure, but can you think of any other case where a politician explictly set a dollar amount and then promised results? Sure seems like there is a difference in kind between me donating money to our sheriff’s campaign in the hopes he will follow policies I prefer vs giving him money to drop charges against me.
Steve
Craig
May 22 2024 at 1:20pm
“charges”
Surely you meant ‘trumped up’ charges, Steve, right? 😉
But for sure it can be a difficult question to differentiate between a campaign contributuon and a bribe. Perhaps I might suggest a distinction between taking a payment from Exxon to give Exxon, and not Getty, an oil lease might be a bribe versus making promises that would pertain to any oil company?
Pierre Lemieux
May 22 2024 at 8:48pm
Craig: That’s an interesting and important distinction. But Buchanan would probably go farther, asking why all companies (and individuals, for that matter) are not equal before the law. With wall-to-wall regulation, of course, that’s a mission impossible. But here, de Jasay would raise a deeper objection that you perhaps had in mind: How can there ever be a law that treats everybody equally? Treating equally all companies who extract oil may very well mean treating differently those and other mining businesses. Treating all social security recipients equally in terms of benefits means treating differently those who die older and younger, etc. There are always, de Jasay argued, some dimensions in which equal treatment in one dimension turns out to be unequal along those other dimensions.
Craig
May 23 2024 at 1:57pm
“But Buchanan would probably go farther, asking why all companies (and individuals, for that matter) are not equal before the law. ”
Its ok to ask that and with respect to me you’re preaching to the choir. If you want to say that the federal government is morally illegitimate due to cronyism and should be relegated to the fate of the dodo, you’ll hear no objection from me. However, all conversations regarding public policy would end there and then, right? So GIVEN a certain amount of constitutionally legitimate cronyism which you and I still would opine would remain morally illegitimate, at what point would a politician to criminal liability for soliciting/accepting bribes.
Laurentian
May 22 2024 at 2:39pm
How exactly are these constitional limits supposed to be enforced? Right now a significant number of people think the US constitution is an outdated document written by genocidal racist slave-owners. And why would either the people or the elites support these limits if they get on the way of something they want? And if the constitution And since classical liberals and libertarians believe in constant evolution and change how exactly do you ensure these constitutional limits won’t be eroded over time because think they are outdated and need? And how do you ensure that constitutional amendments won’t change these constitutional limits too much?
Craig
May 22 2024 at 2:54pm
“How exactly are these constitional limits supposed to be enforced? ”
In Federalist Papers Madison opined that in determining the boundary between federal and state authority the tribunal to decide (of course this is the Supreme Court) should be the national tribubal. Of course ultimately this means the federal government became the sole arbiter of the extent of federal authority where rulings broadly interpreting constitutional authority was the equivalent of an Amendment. What to do? Well, for starters the tribunal could be a state tribunal, or constitutional amendments could be made to limit constitutionally vested authority, ie income tax amendment limiting income tax to 10%.
Ultimatelt that’s exactly what Madison suggested that the trick was to get the government in some arrangement where it was obliged to control itself.
Pierre Lemieux
May 22 2024 at 8:58pm
Laurentian: Buchanan tried to answer these questions. Even in his small Why I, Too, Am Not a Conservative or in his The Limits of Liberty, you will find many answers. (I agree that they are not as concrete as boiling an egg.) For example, when many people discover that their situation in the constitutional order is no longer preferable to what they could (each one, of course) obtain in anarchy, the social contract must be changed. There is a need for a “constitutional revolution.” As you can see in Why, I Too…, such a revolution is not easy to pull.
As for de Jasay, he thought that it was indeed impossible to enforce a constitution issued from a social contract. (See his Against Politics.)
Laurentian
May 22 2024 at 2:57pm
I find this statement interesting since in the 20th Century didn’t classical liberals and libertarian support the destruction of traditions in the name of ending oppression against various groups?
And ironically in doing so they made the state the sole arbiter of public motality. I mean modern day US public morality seems to be entirely based on the views of Big Tech, Executive Branch Bureaucrats and the Supreme Court. The fact that practically every daily interaction requires a SCOTUS ruling or might cause a potential supreme court case can’t be good for society.
Also it is not remembered that the much derided Victorian morality was a pretty explicit attack on the social norms of the aristocracy. The members of the Royal Family and aristocracy who engaged in gambling, drinking, womanizing, took mistresses and fathered illegimate children were not well regarded by 19th century classical liberals.
Pierre Lemieux
May 22 2024 at 9:04pm
Laurentian: Speaking of Hayek, I wrote “destroys the traditional rule of law that generated an auto-regulated social order,” not “the destruction of traditions.” This makes all the difference. Moreover, Hayek specifically mentioned (I think it is in The Fatal Conceit), that it is normal and desirable that rules of morality (he mentions sexual morality) change when they don’t serve to maintain the spontaneous order any more.
Mactoul
May 22 2024 at 10:20pm
Very convenient thing this spontaneous order. Anything we dislike, such as traditional sexual norms, is destructive to this autoregulated order.
Traditions, however slowly evolved, are stifling if they interfere in the slightest with modern notion of sexual freedom.
Mactoul
May 22 2024 at 10:07pm
19c peak of classic liberalism coincided with peak imperialism.
Britain, France, not to mention US did not shrink from using state power How do you think US grew to its present continental dimensions?
So I dispute very much that classic liberalism had any problem whatsoever with state power.
Indeed, the classic liberalism throve on state power.
Laurentian
May 23 2024 at 6:33am
Classical liberals were generally perfectly fine with state power as long as it was directed against Catholics.
And it is often overlooked that J.S. Mill, T. B. Macauley and John Morley were Imperialists. And despite their anti-Imperialism John Bright and Herbert Spencer thought Irish Home Rule was a step too far.
Laurentian
May 23 2024 at 7:16am
I find this aspect interesting. US history would have been very different if it never expanded. No prairies, Pacific or Gulf seaports just for starters.
Also if the US never expanded then about half of the US states could very well still be under Spanish Rule. How different would California, Texas and Florida be if they were still part of Spain or if California and Texas were still Mexican?
Also the LP couldn’t have had their first convention in Denver, nominated a California and an Oregonian for their first ticket or signed the Dallas Accord.
Laurentian
May 23 2024 at 7:31am
Interesting that Bryan Caplan opposes The American Revolution yet he is from California which is only part of the US because the independent US decided to conquer it from Mexico. And would Mexico even have been independent it the American Revolution didn’t happen?
Pierre Lemieux
May 24 2024 at 9:32am
Mactoul: To think that “peak imperialism” occurred in the 19th century, one must believe that history started in 1800. Walter Scheidel’s Escape from Rome throws some light on empire.
Monte
May 23 2024 at 12:42am
…and businesses in environments of imperfect competition. The difference is that corruption in the form of bribes in business are self-correcting, whereas no such self-correcting mechanism exists in politics. Political bribes replace the “impersonal meritocratic procedure with an impersonal willingness-to-pay procedure”, which supports “a system of personalized favors…” (Susan Rose-Ackerman, The Economics of Corruption: A Study in Political Economy, 1978).
Buchanan/Tullock’s calculus was that the Constitution determines the rules by which the game of politics is played. But if those rules can be easily revised or circumvented and the Constitution becomes an instrument subject to the whims of whichever party is in power, it fails to accomplish what they envisioned and what the Founders intended.
David Seltzer
May 23 2024 at 5:14pm
Donald Trump’s promises to big oil execs is one head of the two-headed Hydra. The prospect of regulatory capture is the second. When do the big oil firms push for regs that limit competition or allow special treatment? As my father said on several occasions, “there are a pair of them in it!”
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