More than a decade has gone since public choice classes became established in curriculums of economics, law and political science departments in Japanese universities. At the same time, subjects on public choice are frequently argued in the classes of economic policy, public finance, political science, public policy, and so on.
Public choice is introduced as an analytical tool to describe political decision makings, and, in many cases, the class in such departments proceeds to name topics on democratic political decision makings. The paradox of voting and not voting, single-peakedness, median voter theorem, rational ignorance of voters, rent seeking, capture theory, flypaper effects, political business cycles and fiscal deficit tendency under democratic governments are enumerations. Public choice lectured in these classes is regarded as a discipline to explain a real decision making process.
In addition to the rising recognition of public choice in academic societies, the reason why public choice gained such a position in curriculums is that it furnishes the presuppositions of methodological individualism just the same as economics and provides seamless analyses connecting markets and political processes.
In these decades, many policy oriented departments are inaugurated in Japan. Under globalization, universities must meet the request to turn out the human resources who can skillfully deal with the problems confronting and solve it. Research themes of public choice are realization of agreements within rational actors under conflicting interests, and they may correspond to the request.
But unfortunately, only empirical researches of public choice are referred in many classes, and once entering into the stage of recommending policies, the class in policy oriented departments proceeds, deviated from the presuppositions of self-interested political actors, to an ‘ideal’ policy for a hypothetical government ruled by an omniscient despot.
Taking account of the social requirement for university graduates under globalization, policy recommendations in a policy oriented curriculum must be corresponded to the core presuppositions of public choice. These policy recommendations under ‘ideal’ government model may be afford to choose ‘correct’ answers under a certain methodological setting, but they cannot deliver policies which solve problems in democratic societies. With this meaning they are in the category of an old knowledge-oriented education.
In the setting of a constitutional contract, constitutional political economy shows the process of unanimous agreement to set up a government to get rid of the situation of mutual disadvantage. Policy recommendations of public choice must be made to re-constrict governments by people under the situation of mutual disadvantage just like that of under the constitutional contract.
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