1791
IN 1814 1820
IN 1831 1833
IN 1849 1850
IN 1856
IN 1861 1866 year.
↓James Buchanan is an American politician, diplomat, and fifteenth President of the United States of America. Most modern historians consider James Buchanan to be the worst president in the history of the state.
James Buchanan born April 23 1791 years in Merkersburg (Pennsylvania), in the family of an Irish farmer. He received a law degree in college and eventually had a fairly successful career as an attorney.
IN 1814 year he becomes a member of the legislature in the state of Pennsylvania, and with 1820 holds the post of deputy in Congress for a year. Buchanan's personal life did not work out - his fiancée died when he was still a young man, and after that he decided never to marry. Therefore, among all the presidents of the United States, only James Buchanan lived his life as a bachelor.
IN 1831 Buchanan was appointed ambassador of the United States to Russia, and after returning to America 1833 year he becomes a senator from Pennsylvania. As an experienced lawyer, Buchanan manages to maintain balance and not come into conflict with either representatives of the northern states or representatives of the slave-holding South.
IN 1849 James Buchanan becomes ambassador to Great Britain, and in 1850 year takes part in the Ostend Conference, seeking the right to annex the island of Cuba to the United States.
IN 1856 Buchanan became the Democratic candidate for President of the United States and won the election. For some time he still managed to maintain a neutral position during the showdown between the North and the South, but he could neither prevent nor delay the split that was emerging in the state. Since the president did not take any energetic actions, but preferred to hesitate and wait, preparations for an internecine war were already in full swing in the country.
IN 1861 In 2010, the President of the United States became President, who inherited a state split into two parts by irreconcilable contradictions on issues of slavery and the social system. Buchanan himself, realizing that history would severely condemn him for inaction and indecision, tried to at least somehow explain his actions in his own essay, published in 1866 year.
James Buchanan, brilliant diplomat and most indecisive president, dies on June 1 1868 years in Lancaster (Pennsylvania), at the age of 77 years.
- (b. 1919) American economist. Research in the field of finance, pricing, economic policy of the state. Nobel Prize (1986) ... Big Encyclopedic Dictionary
Buchanan James- (Buchanan, James) (1791 1868), 15th President of the United States (1857 61). Democratic Senator in the US Congress (1835-45) and Secretary of State under President Polk (1845-49). Key figure in the deep. negotiations during the American-Mexico War and... ... The World History
BUCHANAN James- (Buchanan, James) JAMES BUCHANAN (1791 1868), 15th President of the United States, was born near Mercersburg (Pennsylvania) on April 23, 1791. He studied at local schools and at Dickinson College, graduating in 1809, and was admitted to the bar in 1812 . In 1814... ... Collier's Encyclopedia
Buchanan James- Buchanan James (23.4.1791, Mercersburg, Pennsylvania, ≈ 1.6.1868, Wheatland, modern Lancaster, Pennsylvania), US statesman. Initially he joined the Federalist Party, later he became one of the leaders... ... Great Soviet Encyclopedia
Buchanan, James- James Buchanan (born 1919), American economist. Researcher in the field of finance, pricing, state economic policy; supporter of a free market economy. Nobel Prize (1986). ... Illustrated Encyclopedic Dictionary
Buchanan James- (Buchanan) (1791 1868), 15th President of the United States, from the Democratic Party (1857 61). In 1845 49 Secretary of State, one of the organizers of the aggressive Mexican-American War of 1846 48. Contributed to the strengthening of the slave-owning South... encyclopedic Dictionary
BUCHANAN James (President)- BUCHANAN (Buchanan) James (April 23, 1791, near Mercesburg, Pennsylvania June 1, 1868, near Lancaster, in the same place), American statesman, fifteenth President of the United States (1857 1861), from the Democratic Party (see DEMOCRATIC PARTY ... ... encyclopedic Dictionary
BUCHANAN James (economist)- BUCHANAN James M. (full name James McGill) (b. October 2, 1919, Murfreesboro, Tennessee), American economist and political scientist. Career as a scientist In 1940 he graduated from a teacher’s college in his hometown, while studying he earned a living... encyclopedic Dictionary
Buchanan, James McGill- Wikipedia has articles about other people with this surname, see Buchanan. James McGill Buchanan Jr James McGill Buchanan Jr ... Wikipedia
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BUCHANAN (Buchanan) James (1791-1868), American statesman, 15th President of the United States, from the Democratic Party (1857-61). In 1845-49, Secretary of State, one of the organizers of the aggressive Mexican-American War of 1846-48. Contributed to the strengthening of the slave-owning South.
BUCHANAN (Buchanan) James (April 23, 1791, near Mercesburg, Pennsylvania - June 1, 1868, near Lancaster, Pennsylvania), American statesman, 15th President of the United States, from the Democratic Party. Through compromises and concessions to the slave-owning South, he unsuccessfully tried to prevent the Civil War.
Born into a family of Irish immigrants. A lawyer by training. Initially a member of the Federalist Party, after its collapse in the mid-1820s he became a Democrat. He was elected to the Pennsylvania Legislature (1814-16) and the US House of Representatives (1821-31). He was envoy to Russia (1831-33), contributed to the conclusion of a trade agreement between the USA and Russia on December 6 (18), 1832. Senator (1834-45), Secretary of State (1845-49). In 1846, he signed an agreement with Great Britain establishing the border between the United States and British possessions in North America along the 49th parallel west of the Rocky Mountains (“Oregon lands”). This put an end to the decades-long territorial dispute between the two countries. The treaty was of a compromise nature: the most militant American politicians sought to establish a border much further north. In 1848, Buchanan unsuccessfully tried to achieve the nomination of the Democratic Party for the presidential election, after which he withdrew from political life for a while.
Condemning slavery on moral grounds, Buchanan the politician advocated compliance with the provisions of the Constitution that allowed it, and, trying to gain the support of southern party leaders, actually acted in their interests and in the interests of the slave owners of the South. In 1846 he opposed the so-called “Wilmot Proviso” - a legislative amendment that would have prohibited slavery in the territories that were supposed to be annexed to the United States at the end of the Mexican-American War of 1846-48. Supported a number of legislative acts regarding the admissibility of slavery in the Western territories newly incorporated into the United States. Some of these acts contained concessions to the slave states and represented a departure from earlier similar agreements (the Missouri Compromise). In 1853-56 envoy to Great Britain.
In 1854, he took part in the preparation of the Ostend Manifesto, a secret plan (which remained unrealized) proposed by the heads of three American diplomatic missions in Europe. Their plan provided for the forcible seizure of Cuba, which at that time belonged to Spain, if the latter refused to sell it to the United States. The authors of the manifesto believed that otherwise a possible slave uprising in Cuba would destabilize the situation in the US South. However, the annexation of Cuba would create another slave state.
Having thus strengthened his position in the South, Buchanan managed to first achieve his candidacy and then his election in 1856 to the presidency. As president, he interfered with the activities of supporters of the abolition of slavery, and, on the contrary, sought the implementation of the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850 (providing for prosecution in the territory of free states). He supported supporters of slavery in the territory of Kansas, where the question of joining the Union as a free or slave state was being decided. Objectively, Buchanan’s activities only contributed to the expansion of the slave-owning zone and the strengthening of the position of the slave-owning South.
In 1860 he lost the elections to A. When, in the last months of Buchanan's presidency, the southern states began to declare secession from the Union, he condemned the rebels and ordered the garrisons of federal forts in the South to resist them, publicly admitting that he saw no way to stop the collapse of the country.
American economist and Nobel Prize winner James McGill Buchanan was born on October 3, 1919 in Murfreesboro, Tennessee.
Attended Middle Tennessee State Teachers College. In 1941 he graduated from the University of Tennessee Department of Economics with a master's degree. In August of the same year he was called up for military service; studied for some time at the Naval War College. During World War II he served at Naval Headquarters at Pearl Harbor and then at Guam.
After the war, Buchanan continued his education at the University of Chicago, graduating in 1948 with a doctorate in economics.
He taught at the universities of Tennessee, Florida, Virginia, and the University of California.
In his later works (Democracy in Deficit, 1977; The Power to Tax, 1980), Buchanan analyzed and further developed the need for constitutional reform.
In 1986, James Buchanan was awarded the Nobel Prize in Economics "for his exploration of the contractual and constitutional foundations of the theory of environmental and political decision-making." According to the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, "Buchanan's main achievement is that he constantly and persistently emphasized the importance of fundamental rules and applied the concept of the political system as a process of exchange with a view to achieving mutual benefit."
In addition to the Nobel Prize, Buchanan received many other awards and honors, including the Frank Seidman Honorary Prize in Political Economy from the University of Tennessee (1984) and honorary degrees from the Universities of Zurich (Switzerland) and Hesse (Germany). He was an honorary member of the American Economic Association and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and over the years headed various American economic associations.
Every time the theory of public choice comes up, the first thing that comes to mind is the name of Nobel laureate in economics (1986) James McGill Buchanan. This economist was among the first authors to choose a completely new direction of economic analysis - non-market solutions. His first article on this topic, “The Pure Theory of Public Finance: A Proposed Approach,” was published half a century ago, in 1949 (although the birth of the theory of public choice is associated with the publication a year earlier of two articles on majority rule by D. Black). Only at the end of the 60s. This direction will be given its own name - the theory of public choice. Since 1949, Buchanan has published many works, a complete list of which alone takes up more than 20 pages.
Buchanan was born on October 2, 1919 in the USA (Murphysboro, Tennessee). He received his economic education at the famous educational institution, which is the undisputed leader in the number of Nobel laureates in the field of economics, the University of Chicago. Buchanan turned to the problem of public choice after receiving his doctorate in economics in 1948. As he himself later noted, “Only on vacation after defending a dissertation can an aspiring scientist afford to read everything that comes to hand, and my own experience is not exception." If Buchanan had not come across the book of the Swedish economist K. Wicksell, “A Study in the Theory of Finance” (1896), then perhaps this section of the lecture would not have been devoted to him.
Another famous economist who influenced Buchanan was his university teacher F. Knight, one of the founders of the famous Chicago School of economics, which always defended the virtues of markets and competition and opposed government expansion. This Chicago School spirit is clearly present in all of Buchanan's work.
Fate would have it that further research on public choice would be concentrated in the American city of Charlottesville (Virginia). In 1963, Buchanan and Tullock organized the first conference of economists there who chose political decisions and government institutions as the object of their analysis. Articles and conference materials were originally published under the title “Papers on non-market decision making”. And in 1969, Buchanan and Tullock created the Center for the Study of Public Choice, which until 1982 was located at the Virginia Polytechnic Institute. It is currently the Center for Public Choice Studies at J. Mason University (Fairfax, Virginia).
Another “fateful” conference took place in Chicago in 1967. At this conference, the Society for Public Choice was organized and it was decided to publish the fourth volume of the Notes with a new title - “Public choice”, and subsequently publish a journal with the same name. This is how the famous magazine appeared, which in 1993 (on its 25th anniversary) was subscribed to by about 1000 libraries around the world. Note that the magazine owes much of its popularity to the regular publication of Buchanan’s articles. Since 1990, the Center began to publish a second journal - “Constitutional Political Economy”.
The Center for Public Choice has become the true organizational core of the so-called Virginia School of political economy. Its most famous representatives, besides, of course, the repeatedly mentioned Buchanan and Tullock, also include such famous American economists as D. Muller, M. Olson, C. Rowley, R. Tollison. All of them belong to the “imperialist” direction of modern economic thought, which is characterized by the application of methods of economic analysis to areas of research that are non-traditional for an economist. In fact, one of the first “imperialists” was Buchanan, who carried out an economic analysis of the political life of society. Buchanan wrote: “Public choice is a view of politics that arises from the extension of the application of the tools and methods of the economist to collective or non-market decisions.” In this regard, the theory of public choice today has another name - new political economy.
According to the ideas of J. Buchanan, this new discipline is built on two main methodological postulates. The first is that the individual pursues his own interests (that is, he is homo oeconomicus); the second is the interpretation of the political process through which individuals realize their interests as a type of exchange.
However, the postulate of individualism is given the main place. "The first and most important assumption which provides the basis for any true theory of democracy is that which locates the sources of value exclusively in the individuals themselves." Political and other institutions are judged according to how well they enable individuals to pursue their own interests. The individualism that Buchanan chose as a premise for his analysis makes it possible to conceptualize the political process as a mutually beneficial exchange. The ideal is the establishment of social institutions that, like a competitive market, will allow those pursuing individual interests to simultaneously ensure public interests.
Note that it was precisely these methodological foundations for the economic analysis of the political process that were contained in Wicksell’s work. As Buchanan wrote, “Wicksell deserves universal recognition as the founder of modern public choice theory, since his 1896 dissertation contained three essential elements on which this theory is based: methodological individualism, the concept of “homo oeconomicus” (homo oeconomicus) and the concept of politics as exchange".
What are the interests of individuals in public choice? Buchanan's answer to this question is much the same as the traditional one: public goods and private goods with externalities whose supply through the market leads to a Pareto-worse outcome than their supply through some political process. However, Buchanan tends to view the state primarily as a means of realizing social consent, developing rules that ensure social interaction with the benefit of everyone, and not as a simple provider of public goods and a corrector of market failures. This reflects the fact that, unlike many of his colleagues in the study of public choice, he pays more attention to the normative analysis of the state.
The second postulate (the approach to politics as a mutually beneficial exchange) does not mean that there are no fundamental differences between the political market and the market for private goods. In the latter, the benefits from the exchange with an increase in the number of participants are distributed with increasingly lower costs of trade in relation to the proportions of the distribution of these benefits. If in the case of a bilateral monopoly the contractual process for dividing these benefits takes a lot of time and effort, then in a perfectly competitive market individuals simply accept market prices as given. The second important property of the private goods market is that the higher the level of competition, that is, the greater the number of its participants, the more efficient the market.
Unlike markets for private goods, a political market where decisions are made collectively becomes less and less efficient as the number of participants increases. Thus, a political decision can be Pareto efficient if no one objects to it. After all, transactions in the market for private goods are always a purely voluntary act, carried out without fail with the “unanimity” of the parties. This means that a political decision, if it claims to be a Pareto-efficient outcome, must be made unanimously. If the number of participants in transactions in the political market increases, then the probability of unanimity is reduced to almost zero, as well as the possibility of establishing a Pareto-efficient state. Increased mobility of the population also leads to this, while in private goods markets it increases competition and brings them closer to an efficient state.
Buchanan emphasizes other differences between the political market and the market for private goods. In the first, people pay less attention to the “quality” of choice. This is due to the fact that when buying a product on the private market, a person receives it for sure, but when voting for a candidate who promises, say, the construction of a bridge, the bridge is not guaranteed even if this candidate wins the election. The market for private goods has a significantly higher ability to “fine-tune” - a person can choose between numerous varieties of one good, buy different goods in a wide variety of variations at the same time. Political choice is made from a small set of mutually exclusive alternatives.
The listed advantages of the private goods market and the disadvantages of the political market determine Buchanan’s tendency to give the palm to the private market over the state wherever possible. However, what about where the private market does not work or works extremely inefficiently and collective decisions are required?
Buchanan proposed his vision of a solution to this problem, which was later called “constitutional economics.” In order for a political mechanism to become effectively similar to a perfectly competitive market, all individuals must be, firstly, participants in the same contract, and, secondly, as already noted, this contract must be concluded by them unanimously. This contract (social contract) was defined as the constitution.
This idea of unanimity of a collective decision was also present in Wicksell. Since Wicksell understood that there were costs to achieving a unanimous decision, he proposed making decisions by a qualified majority of 90% of the votes. However, as soon as we move away from unanimity, two problems immediately arise. Firstly, the political decision will obviously be Pareto-inefficient, since some members of the community will be forced to act contrary to their interests; secondly, a kind of “infinite regression” (an endless return to the previous state) arises when determining voting rules. What are the rules for establishing voting rules? Who, how and why determines that, for example, 90% of the votes are sufficient to approve a decision?
What, according to Buchanan, are the advantages of unanimity? First, the “infinite regression” is immediately eliminated. Secondly, the rights of each individual are unconditionally respected. If the individual subsequently does not agree with the decisions of the community made in accordance with the constitution, then he at least agrees with the rules on the basis of which these decisions are made. Thirdly, at the constitutional stage, each individual is in a state of uncertainty regarding his position in the future (i.e., there is a direct analogy with the Rawlsian “veil of ignorance”) and, because of this, such a constitution will not exclude the redistribution of income, since a wealthy individual today does not know what awaits him (or his children) many years later. And finally, fourthly, justice ensures the consent of all individuals to follow its provisions and rules at the post-constitutional stage. This agreement is also reinforced by its contractual nature - each individual who voluntarily entered into a constitutional contract considers the set of rules contained in it as the best possible. If the consensus in society regarding the constitution collapses, then such a society faces anarchy. Fear of it also contributes to an individual's decision to follow constitutional rules.
Buchanan makes a fundamental distinction between two stages of the political process: the development of rules and the game by these rules, the constitutional and post-constitutional stages. In accordance with the two stages, the roles of the state are also divided. The “protecting state” ensures the game according to constitutional rules, but does not determine these rules themselves (acts like a football referee), the “producing state” supplies society with non-market goods - goods that private markets provide poorly or do not provide at all.
The ideal social order, according to Buchanan, is built on the principles of contractionism. They include the following.
1. Equal treatment of all individuals at the constitutional stage, with the rule of unanimity serving to protect individual rights and thereby ensuring that the rules and institutions embodied in the constitution also treat individuals impartially as equals.
2. Action in the second stage of the political process is effectively limited by the rules developed in the first, constitutional stage, and this is true not only for individual citizens, but also for elected representatives, the bureaucracy and the lawyers who administer justice.
3. The fundamental difference between actions taken within the framework of constitutional rules and changes to those rules themselves. The latter take place only at the constitutional stage and are ideally built on the principle of unanimity.
According to Buchanan, to the extent that a country meets these three criteria, it can be considered a constitutional democracy whose institutions have contractionist normative properties.
How does Buchanan relate his ideal model to existing reality? He believes that every democratic country has its own “constitutional status quo” (be it a formal constitution, as in the United States, or an informal one, as in the UK). Each individual then compares this status quo with the ideal constitution that he can imagine as the product of the unanimous decision of all citizens if the vote were to take place today. If the gap between the actual constitution and the ideal one is not so great, then the individual will find that it is in his interests to comply with the existing constitution. According to Buchanan, every citizen should ask himself not simply whether the existing constitution is good or not, but whether a better constitution can be obtained at a cost less than the potential benefits from it?
Buchanan's position can be characterized as both conservative (defending the existing order) and revolutionary. A “constitutional revolution,” according to him, can be justified if the existing rules are so far removed from those that might be chosen by society today that the costs of adopting a new constitution are less than the costs of continuing to follow the outdated rules.
In his works, Buchanan notes the need for such a “constitutional revolution” in the United States. It is clear that, based on real conditions, what is proposed is not a referendum on a new constitution based on the principle of unanimity, but amendments to the current constitution in accordance with the existing order. Among a number of proposed amendments, special attention is drawn to the proposal to constitutionally secure a balanced (deficit-free) state budget. Buchanan starts from the premise that a politician competes for votes by offering voters tax-spending packages. It is assumed that voters suffer from the so-called fiscal illusion. As a result, politicians win votes by promising to increase spending and cut taxes, while budget shortfalls are covered by issuing bonds or issuing money. It is proposed to compensate for the lost “sense of fiscal responsibility” among politicians with a corresponding amendment to the constitution. In addition, it is proposed to introduce constitutional restrictions on the powers of the authorities in the field of monetary policy.
Buchanan is a principled opponent of policies that allow budget deficits in the name of maintaining business activity and employment. He believes that the state budget should not be any different from the household budget, i.e. it should always remain balanced. The reader will be able to fully appreciate the economic significance of Buchanan's constitutional amendments only after studying the macroeconomics course, which will begin in the next issue of ES.
In the United States, the constitutional amendment proposed by Buchanan on a deficit-free budget is supported by the Republican Party. Several years ago, she began a campaign to include it in the country's constitution, but in Congress she lacked a few votes for this. However, the ideas of a deficit-free budget so firmly captured public opinion in the United States (not without the influence of the Virginia school of political economy) that the Democratic Clinton administration implemented a deficit-free budget in practice. Moreover, over the next 10 years, a cumulative positive federal budget balance of $660 billion is expected.
Buchanan wrote a lot about the threat of uncontrolled growth of the state, its expropriation of individual rights, a threat that in modern economic literature is commonly called the “Leviathan threat.” He showed that “democracy without shackles” leads to the expansion of the state. The producing state is increasing its budgets. There is a kind of cumulative effect here: larger budgets - more government employees - more voters voting for the expansion of government programs. The protecting state, which, in theory, should only ensure individual rights enshrined in a constitutional treaty, takes on more and more powers that should be determined solely on the basis of an agreement between individuals, changes the constitutional norms themselves, i.e. changes the basic structure of rights without citizens' consent. The Constitution, according to Buchanan, should effectively limit the state, put it within strict limits, create a kind of “cage for Leviathan” and thereby guarantee the sovereignty of each individual.
In one of his works, Buchanan succinctly expressed his credo as follows: “In my fundamental convictions I remain an individualist, a constitutionalist, a contractionist, a democrat (all these words essentially mean the same thing to me), and professionally I am an economist ".
Translated works:
1. Buchanan J. Minimal policy of the market system // From plan to market: the future of post-communist republics. - M.: Catallaxy, 1993. S. 105 - 116.
2. Buchanan J. The Constitution of Economic Policy (Nobel Lecture) // Questions of Economics. 1994. ? 6. pp. 104 - 113.
3. Buchanan J. Extraction of rent and extraction of profit [Abstract] // Political rent in the market and transition economy. - M.: IMEMO, 1995. P. 22 - 25.
4. Buchanan J. Introduction to constitutional economic theory (excerpts) // Adam Smith, John M. Keynes, James M. Buchanan. Tutorial. - M.: Moscow State University Publishing House, 1996. P. 108 - 109.
5. Buchanan J. Political economy of the welfare state (Lecture given at the Industrial Institute of Economic and Social Research) // World Economy and International Relations. 1996. ? 5. pp. 46 - 52.