Competitive Governments: An Economic Theory of Politics and Public Finance Paperback - 1998

First line

The first and overriding objective of the whole of this study is an exploration of some of the implications and requirements of the assumption, which I endeavor to buttress empirically, that governments are competitive - that each one individually is internally competitive, that they compete among themselves, and, last but not least, that they compete with other institutions in society that are, like them, engaged in the provision of goods and services.

From the rear cover

Competitive Governments explores in a systematic way the hypothesis that governments are internally competitive, that they are competitive in their relations with one another and in their relations with other institutions in society that, like them, supply consuming households with goods and services. Professor Breton contends that competition not only serves to bring the political system to an equilibrium but that it also leads to a revelation of the households' true demand functions for publicly provided goods and services, and to the molding of a link between the quantities and the qualities demanded and supplied and the taxprices paid for these goods and services. In the real world where information is costly, the links may not be first-best, but they will be efficient if competition is vigorous.