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When market forces fail us, what are we to do? Who will step in to protect the public interest? The government, right? Wrong.
The romantic view of bureaucrats coming to the rescue confuses the true relationship between economics and politics. Politicians often cite “market failure” as justification for meddling with the economy, but a group of leading scholars show the shortcomings of this view. InGovernment Failure, these scholars explain the school of study known as “public choice,” which uses the tools of economics to understand and evaluate government activity.
Gordon Tullock, one of the founders of public choice, explains how government "cures" often cause more harm than good. Tullock provides an engaging overview of public choice and discusses how interest groups seek favors from government at enormous costs to society. Displaying the steely realism that has marked public choice, Tullock shows the political world as it is, rather than as it should be.
Gordon Brady scrutinizes American public policy, looking closely at international trade, efforts at regulating technology, and environmental policy. At every turn Brady points out the ways in which interest groups have manipulated the government to advance their own agendas.
Arthur Seldon, a seminal scholar in public choice, provides a comparative perspective from Great Britain. He examines how government interventions in the British economy have led to inefficiency and warns about the political centralization promised by the European Community.
Government Failure heralds a new approach to the study of politics and public policy. This book enlightens readers with the basic concepts of public choice in an unusually accessible way to show the folly of excessive faith in the state.

"The scope of government control and activity has burgeoned far beyond the conception of the founders of the American republic. Scholars and pundits either applaud this expansion or shrug their shoulders as if it were unavoidable. But the transformation is neither laudable nor inevitable. In this book, Tullock and his coauthors Arthur Seldon and Gordon Brady analyze the problems of control of government and control by government. They argue convincingly that what appear to be disparate and unrelated problems in the U.S. and in Great Britain are in fact the bitter fruit of the same poisoned tree. The incentives and behavior of government officials can be understood using the theory of public choice, which Tullock developed with Nobel Prize winner James Buchanan. This book is both an introduction to that theory, and a fascinating example of its continuing relevance to understanding government action and misbehavior.”
--Michael C. Munger, Chairman, Department of Political Science, Duke University and President, Public Choice Society, 1996-98

“This is an invaluable book by three noted scholars of public choice. It shows that one way of fighting back is to demonstrate that government is a lot more costly than you think. These authors teach this lesson well.”
--Robert D. Tollison, Robert Hearin Professor of Economics, University of Mississippi and President, Public Choice Society, 1994-96

Gordon Tullock

Gordon Tullock (1922) is University Professor of Law and Economics and Distinguished Research Fellow in the James M. Buchanan Center for Political Economy at George Mason University. He holds a joint teaching position in the Department of Economics and the School of Law. Professor Tullock received a J.D. from the University of Chicago in 1947. Tullock is one of the fathers of public choice theory.

Gordon L. Brady

Gordon L. Brady is an american economist a senior research scholar at the Center for the Study of Public Choice at George Mason University. He has published more than 70 papers and 3 books, including Government: Whose Obedient Servant? A Primer on Public Choice. With Arthur Seldon and Gordon Tullock (2000), On the Trail of Homo Economicus: Essays by Gordon Tullock Edited with Robert Tollison (1994) and Duncan Black: Selected Works of the Unpublished Legacy Edited with Gordon Tullock (1995).

Arthur Seldon

Dr Arthur Seldon CBE (1916-2005) was joint founder president, with Ralph Harris, of the Institute of Economic Affairs, where he directed academic affairs for 30 years.

He studied at the London School of Economics where Arnold Plant and Lionel Robbins deepened his interest in classical liberalism and Friedrich Hayek introduced him to Austrian Economics. He received an honorary degree in 1999 from the University of Buckingham.

• Seldon was Vice president of the Mont Pelerin Society (MPS), whose past presidents include von Hayek and Milton Friedman.

  For over thirty years from the late 1950s Arthur Seldon was the Editorial Director of the London-based Institute for Economic Affairs, where his publishing program was one of the principal influences on governments all around the world, persuading them to liberalize their economies.

• Arthur Seldon was a prophet of what came to be called Thatcherism. The Thatcherite revolution of the 1970s and 1980s had many roots, but one was certainly a sea change in the intellectual climate of the times, and Seldon played a huge role in that sea change.