ZadekpediaJames Buchanan was a Nobel Prize-winning economist and a central figure in Public Choice theory. Across three episodes of The Bob Zadek Show, guests discussed his work, his critics, and his intellectual legacy.
Democracy in Chains and the MacLean critique
In a 2017 episode, Michael Munger, a colleague of Nancy MacLean at Duke, discussed her book Democracy in Chains. Munger said MacLean had seen Buchanan’s name in footnotes about education segregation and the creation of Chile’s constitution during the Pinochet regime, then visited George Mason University to examine archives. She concluded that Buchanan had a central role in what she described as a conservative revolution to repress voting rights and install plutocracy. Munger said the book received wide attention, including being named by Oprah Winfrey as one of the ten most important books of the summer, and that its timing after Donald Trump’s 2017 victory contributed to its reception. Munger said he reviewed the book himself and found it well-written but mistaken: he said MacLean stitched together salient documents into a plausible narrative and filled gaps incorrectly, calling it a narrative fiction book about a past that never happened. He said she fabricated was too strong a word but that her gaps were just mistaken. Bob Zadek noted that NPR commissioned a novelist to review the book and later apologized for the choice of reviewer. Leviathan in Chains: Michael Munger on Public Choice Economics (2017)
Public Choice and civil asset forfeiture
In a 2019 episode, Brian D. Kelly discussed civil asset forfeiture with Bob Zadek. Zadek said economists who study this, specifically James Buchanan, call it the proof of public choice theory, and that Buchanan observed that government workers are motivated by the same human failings as private-sector workers, including career enhancement and building the dollars they control. Zadek said this does not single out law enforcement as especially bad but as just plain human. Kelly agreed and added that forfeiture is convenient for dealing with assets but that most forfeitures are of cash, not property, and other tools exist. Kelly described a Florida anecdote in which police let northbound drug traffic go and stopped southbound cars carrying cash, and a South Carolina highway interdiction program called Rolling Thunder on I-85 and I-26. He said police do not need to arrest anyone to take cash and that drivers are often coerced into signing forms saying they will not dispute the seizure. He cited a Sacramento Bee article about the feds seizing 100 homes in marijuana grow operations valued in the hundreds of millions, noting that no arrests had been made. Brian D. Kelly on the False Promise of Policing-for-Profit (2019)
Buchanan, Madison, and constitutional limits
In a 2022 episode, Munger said Buchanan began writing in the late 1950s and during the 1960s with co-authors, and that he was interested in what he called limiting Leviathan and the role of constitutions in creating limits on government. Munger said Buchanan was not an anarchist but believed government needed powers while wanting to limit Leviathan. He said Buchanan won the Nobel Prize in Economics in 1986. Munger said Buchanan’s book The Calculus of Consent, published in 1962, argued that its authors were writing down scientific principles behind what James Madison was trying to accomplish in the Constitution. Munger said Buchanan was surprised the work was controversial because it was already embodied in the Constitution. He said Buchanan argued that we cannot rely on good people and need good rules, and that Madison wrote in Federalist No. 51 that ambition can be made to counteract ambition through separation of powers. Zadek said Madison believed the Bill of Rights was unnecessary because nothing in the Constitution gave government the power to abridge speech, conscience, religion, or assembly in the first instance, but that litigation in support of free speech always cites the Bill of Rights rather than the Constitution itself. Troubleshooting the Constitution (2022)
Across episodes
The three episodes show no development in the treatment of Buchanan; each uses him for a different purpose. Munger in 2017 defends Buchanan against MacLean’s critique, Zadek in 2019 invokes Buchanan to explain forfeiture as public choice behavior, and Munger in 2022 credits Buchanan with reviving Madisonian constitutionalism. The 2017 and 2022 episodes both feature Munger, but they address different books and different aspects of Buchanan’s work.