The influence of Bureaucracy and of Interest Groups on Public Choice

José Neves Cruz

Keywords

Public choice; methodological individualism

Abstract

The analysis of the political system by economic science as a mean of translating the preferences of the community into public choice has been going on for seven decades. This approach is currently called Public Choice and it is especially suited to the study of the choices that different agents (individuals or groups) make in an institutional environment of interaction.

This work, in general, is part of a policy approach subordinated to methodological individualism. However, we oppose a view of public choice based on the interaction of groups organised around a common interest (this can be defined only from a strict view of rationality and/or combining sociological motivations - altruism, affinity, sympathy, affiliation, social norms, ethics). These two perspectives are the two essential pillars from which economists also built the study of politics.

Almedina