This paper proposes and compares different characterization of what an economic expert is — his/her role, functions and legitimacy — according to different conceptions of economics: welfarism, libertarian paternalism and positive political economy. We show that both welfarism and libertarian...

James M. Buchanan received the 1986 Nobel Prize in economics for his work on public choice theory. Indeed, Buchanan was one of the first who proposed to use economics to analyze political and constitutional phenomena. But Buchanan was not only interested in public choice, constitutional...

How do economists defme democracy? Such is the question this paper tries to deal with. We contrast two economists' views on democracy. First, we show how, within the framework of public choice theory, the use of the tools and methodology of mainstream economic analysis, the focus put upon...