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to believe. The first chapter provides some background on the recent politicalchanges in Mexico, but it would be helpful if the book had provided moreinformation, such as an introduction to each election, explaining what wasgoing on at the time, who the candidates were, what issues were important,and what the important political reforms were to date. The book also lacksa comparison to any other model of voting behavior. It would be interestingto have a chapter comparing voting in Mexico and the US, explaining whatwe can learn by studying Mexican elections. As a general note, some of thechapters are well-written and well-documented, while others, like the chapterby Stevenson on female representatives and gender-specific policy proposals,seem unfinished and out of place.

ROBIN GRIER, Economics, University of Oklahoma, Norman, OK73019-2103, U.S.A.

Public Choice105: 396–398, 2000

Mwangi S. Kimenyi and John Mukum Mbaku (Eds),Institutions andcollective choice in developing countries: Applications of the theory ofpublic choice. Aldershot, UK and Brookfield, VT, USA: Ashgate Publishing,1999. xxi + 426 pages. $83.95 (cloth).

This is the first book in a projected series,Public Choice and DevelopingSocieties, and it represents a fine collection of essays applying the basicprinciples of public choice to the problems of economic developmentin Third World economies. The editors have brought together a team ofcontributors that includes Gordon Tullock and the current editorial crew ofthis journal. Contributors also include experts in economic development aswell as some of the newer faces in the field of public choice economics.

The principles of public choice can both explain the structure of insti-tutions and their economic performance. The problems of stagnation andunderdevelopment are not due to capital, technology, information, resourcesor entrepreneurship, but to poor collective decision making mechanisms. Theanswer to the problem of development lies in the realm of public choice andthis book makes this point abundantly clear.

In addition to this general contribution, the book is a great introduction topublic choice economics. The Shughart chapter on the interest group the-ory of government and the Kimenyi/Tollison chapter on rent seeking, forexample, should prove to be an effective initiation to public choice theoryfor specialists in economic development.

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P.J. Brown’s chapter is particularly important because government controlof money is the fountainhead of government intervention and is particularlyruinous in Third World countries. I agree with the author that the typicalpublic choice answer – write a good constitutional rule for stable money –is, by itself, nothing but a pipe dream. And I also agree that policies thatenhance free trade and foreign investment would probably reduce the levelsof inflation and the degree of monetary mismanagement. However, the authortends to treat inflation as a passive response to the problems of Third Worldnations (such as natural disasters and non-diversified economies) rather thanas a primary cause of underdevelopment.

One important thread woven into several papers is the size and compos-ition of a national economy. This issue is most thoroughly developed in thechapter by Kimenyi where the unrealistic approach of unanimous consent isdropped in favor of the politically incorrect proposition that nations should bebased on ethnicity. This approach reveals the European-established borders ofAfrica, the Middle East, and Asia as the nonsense that they are and supportsLudwig von Mises’s analysis of eighty years ago which showed that nationalboundaries are best based on common bonds such as language and ethni-city. All debates about competing governments, federalism, and overlappingjurisdictions can be abandoned when the right to secede and confederate ismaintained.

The book is both insightful and intriguing and I have only a few minorsuggestions. First, the institutional detail of underdeveloped economies islacking in many of the chapters. However this is a minor problem that will nodoubt be addressed in subsequent volumes. Second, the book clearly spellsout the public choice problems and solutions to economic development, butoffers no mechanism for achieving these solutions because of institutionalproblems such as rent seeking and interest groups. Sending a copy of thebook to your favorite third world dictator will do little to improve the lotpeople living in the Third World. The Gwartney-Holcombe paper is a goodexample of insightful analysis and recommendations, but barely a word onhow to implement those recommendations other than to comment on its nearimpossibility. As a result, the book will leave the average reader informed butdiscouraged.

I suspect that this black hole in the road to reform results from the aversionof public choice economists to ideology. After a long but ultimately success-ful battle to show that “interests” rather than ideologies control the course ofevents, public choice scholars are generally hostile to any role for ideology.The only hope for reform seems to lie in the slim chance of convincing fu-ture rulers of the correctness of certain constitutional reforms. For example,Gordon Tullock, one of the most insightful and innovative scholars of our

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time, concludes his chapter with the lamentation that “we must continue thework which greatly improves our understanding of how governments work,and hope that on the basis of this increased understanding, we can make themfunction better.”

Ideology is simply a person’s worldview that is shaped by education, ex-perience and economic interest. Ideologies, like political parties are policymenus that allow individuals to deal with the problem of rational ignorance.History seems to indicate that when ideologies are introduced, spread andbecome aligned with interest groups they become a powerful source of socialchange.

The problem with much of the underdeveloped world is that it has no ideo-logy that would act as a conduit for interest groups to influence governmentpolicy in the direction of economic development. Education is lacking andideology tends to be tribally oriented or Marxist while religion in the un-derdeveloped world tends to be collectivist rather than individualist oriented.If, for example, public choice economics with its implicit ideology of gov-ernment failure, rent seeking, and the private-interest theory of governmentshould get a receptive audience in the underdeveloped world, it could act as apowerful antidote to existing ideologies and be a potent source of institutionalchange.

One important aspect of developing countries that is largely neglected inthis volume is the role of economic development assistance policies. Thesepolicies have been a colossal failure and clearly cry out for investigation bypublic choice theorists. In addition, clandestine policies such as the UnitedStates’ support of the invasion of the Congo should be examined through thelens of public choice to determine its cause and impact on economic devel-opment. No doubt these issues and many more will be examined in futurevolumes in the series.

The book represents an excellent introduction to public choice economicsand to its long overdue application to underdeveloped economies. It is highlyrecommended for specialists in development economics who are unfamiliarwith public choice analysis, but could profitably be read by any economist oranyone interested in the problems of Third World.

MARK THORNTON, Abbott Turner College of Business, ColumbusState University, Columbus, GA 31907-5645, U.S.A.