I proceed as follows. In the following section I define public choice as
involving the application of the methods of economics to the study of
politics and, in particular, as requiring the assumption of self-interested
behaviour. I then place the development of public choice theory within the
broader context of post-war economic theory and, in particular, of the
theory of market failure used by many economists to justify state intervention
in the 1950s and early 1960s. In these first two sections the argument
is pitched at a very general level. To compensate for this I go on to introduce
some specific accounts of state failure as they relate to the behaviour
of politicians, firms and public servants. I close the chapter by rehearsing
one obvious but nevertheless still powerful criticism of public choice
theory: that people do not behave, or at least do not always behave,