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Beyond Politics: Markets, Welfare, and the Failure of Bureaucracy. By William C. Mitchell and Randy T. Simmons. Boulder: Westview, 1994. 234p. $55.00 cloth, $19.95 paper.
Governments as diverse as those of China, Great Britain, Hungary, Argentina, and the United States have responded to an increasing recognition of the virtues of markets. The idea of government intervention or direct government control as a way to solve social and economic problems is on the defensive almost everywhere. On the other hand, there is resistance in places like Washington, DC, to the scaling back of public programs of various kinds.
How does one know where to stop in a reduction of government intervention? What is the proper balance between markets and government? We need a guide that would simultaneously recognize the virtues and failings of markets and the virtues and failings of government. Beyond Politics might be such a guide, because it is one of the few books to discuss market failure and government failure in a single volume. But unfortunately, this book is not an even-handed balancing of the strengths and weaknesses of these two fundamental alternatives. Beyond Politics is consistently against government and in favor of markets. The book begins with an attack on "welfare economists" as having an uncritical "faith in government activism" and the theory of market failure as having "dethroned" markets.
Now, some economists are surely guilty of such a one-sided view, but most economists that I know are simultaneously influenced by a respect for...