ȂȆȁ Partʺʺ: Politics and PhilosophyĻat something as inadequate and perverse as this book (and its prede-
cessor article) has been written and published under prestigious academic
auspices is a phenomenon crying out for explanation. Tackling the puzzle
is important, for the book’s mere existence and academic trappings will
carry some weight. Along with like-minded academics, politicians and
bureaucrats relish support from what “studies have shown.”
Before exploring possible explanations, I should confess to indigna-
tion dating back to theȀȈȇȈarticle. Perhaps my judgment must be dis-
counted. I used to criticize that article in my graduate seminars in political
economy. What called my attention to the book was Donald Boudreaux’s
excellent, and properly adverse, review article on it in the first issue (Spring
ȀȈȈȅ) ofĻe Independent Review. (In hopes of avoiding duplication, I set
Boudreaux’s review aside while reading the book and drafting my own
review.)
I must also confess to embarrassment. It is a commonplace remark that
one should not ask about people’s motives. Yet sometimes such inquiry is
necessary. A detective in a murder case must conjecture about motives
while formulating rival hypotheses and trying to rule out all but one of
them. Ļe intellectual puzzle of a curious book requires a roughly similar
procedure.
My first hypothesis must be that Wittman is driven by passion for
truth. Conceivably he is quite right: the now-familiar public-choice the-
ories of bureaucracy and democratic politics are radically deficient, and
in the ways he diagnoses. Democratic processes do indeed closely resem-
ble competitive processes in markets for goods and services. It is I who
am wrong, blinded by mindless indignation to the merits of Wittman’s
brilliant revisionism.
But other hypotheses suggest themselves. Ļe thought did cross my
mind that Wittman’s book (and article) might be a sustained spoof, like
physicist Alan Sokal’s article on “postmodern gravity” inSocial Text, or if
not a spoof, at least a move in an academic game. Wittman does acknowl-
edge (p. ix) that he has been playing a “game,” that latecomers to an intel-
lectual controversy enjoy an advantage, and that he has “had a lot of fun.”
Or perhaps Wittman was trying, as an exercise, to make the best case
for democratic government he could devise. “Democratic decisions should
be treated as innocent until proven guilty,” he says, “and they deserve a
lawyer arguing their side of the case” (p.ȀȈȂ). With ample talent already
making the prosecution’s case, perhaps Wittman chose to write the legal
brief for the defense. Letting someone else recognize how weak even that