The spatial politics of F.A. Hayek's Road to Serfdom
Abstract This paper re-examines Hayek's Road to Serfdom in historical context. Of particular interest is Hayek's claim that “left” and “right” socialism of the 1930s had much in common. In making this argument, Hayek held that all socialism implied planning at the expense of consumer sovereignty. We first agree to plan, but if we are then unable to agree on its contents, someone imposes a specific course of action on us. Hayek was strenuously opposed at the time by Abba Lerner and E.F.M. Durbin, who held that we can conceptualize, and perhaps put into place, a sort of socialism which yields to the will of consumer preferences.
Blundering into Wisdom? The Missing Elements of Hayek's Spontaneous Order Liberalism
This paper discusses F. A. Hayek's theory of spontaneous order and cultural evolution. After briefly outlining the main elements of Hayek's approach, we review some of the criticisms addressed to his evolutionary theory. In particular, we discuss a number of paradoxes generated by his view of spontaneous cultural evolution. In our view, these paradoxes result from an insufficiently specified theoretical environment in which cultural and social evolution are taking place. Namely, Hayek does not spend much time discussing the precise nature of political markets that are nonetheless crucial for the persistence and the change of institutional outcomes. Likewise, Hayek places himself outside of his own theory of cultural evolution, for he lacks a model of how ideas and intellectuals affect the choice of one of the multiple evolutionary equilibria. We outline one such model, which uses the notion of sympathy as its main driving mechanism. Taken together, we claim that an explicit analysis of politics and a model of influence of ideas would have helped to resolve some of the key incongruities in Hayek's evolutionary work.
Deliberative Democracy and the Resource Curse: A Nationwide Experiment in Tanzania
Oil and gas discoveries in developing countries are often associated with short-sighted economic policies and, in response, calls to insulate resource management from populist impulses. We report on a randomized experiment testing methods to overcome this apparent tension between sound resource governance and democratic politics. Soon after Tanzania’s discovery of major natural gas reserves, we invited a nationally representative sample of voters to an intensive public deliberation of policy options featuring nationally recognized experts and small-group discussions. Democratic deliberation reinforced the public’s strong preference for rapid spending of gas revenues, but also increased support for various prudential and economically orthodox measures, including independent oversight of gas revenues, limits on government borrowing, and selling gas abroad rather than subsidizing fuel at home. These effects were driven by deliberation per se, rather than a pure information treatment, and show no evidence of contamination by facilitatoror peer-effects in group deliberations. www.cgdev.org Justin Sandefur, Nancy Birdsall, James Fishkin, and Mujobu Moyo