{"title":"Albert Breton","description":"\u003cp\u003eDelve into the thought-provoking works of Albert Breton, exploring themes of economics, social structures, and political philosophy. His insightful analyses offer a unique lens on modern society. Browse his key titles.\u003c\/p\u003e","products":[{"product_id":"political-extremism-and-rationality-book-albert-breton-9780521168618","title":"Political Extremism and Rationality","description":"Political extremism is widely considered to be the product of irrational behavior. The distinguishing feature of this collection by well-known economists and political scientists from North America, Europe and Australia is to propose a variety of explanations which all insist on the rationality of extremism. 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The papers in this study are therefore rooted in the latter frame of reference. They explore various types of multijural manifestations from the harmonizing potential of international treaties to indigenous law and the use of hard and soft pluralism. In addition, the authors consider the external events which are not part of the processes of multijural adjustment but which serve to influence these processes. Included among these important external events are European integration, the growing importance accorded to human rights, the international practice of law, the growth of the Internet, the globalization of markets and the flow of immigrants. 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The author's analysis is cast in a relatively simple demand, supply and demand-supply-equilibrium framework, using the tools of marginal and stability analysis to explain the forces that influence and determine the flow of resources as they are allocated between competing ends in the public sector. The book presents a model of demand by citizens, who are assumed to be maximizing their desires for specific public policies and private goods, and a model of the supply of public policies by politicians and bureaucrats, who are assumed to be maximizing the probability of their re-election and the size of their budgets. Breton defines government policies and the institutional framework for collective choices in terms that render them amenable to further analysis.  The main accomplishment of Breton's theory is that it provides the ability to analyze the interaction of individuals and generates testable propositions about the behavior of these individuals as well as about the behavior of public expenditures and taxation in more aggregative terms. 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Instead, government must be understood as one of the major economic institutions of society, one that behaves like more familiar economic institutions--the household and the firm--though the market it confronts is a market for policies rather than for goods and services. Albert Breton's pathbreaking work remains important in taking us toward a theory of representative government that enables an understanding of the observed behavior of political institutions.  The author's analysis is cast in a relatively simple demand, supply and demand-supply-equilibrium framework, using the tools of marginal and stability analysis to explain the forces that influence and determine the flow of resources as they are allocated between competing ends in the public sector. 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