'There is more to the theory of entangled political economy than just noting superficial similarities to, say, particle physics. In this, I believe, the author has succeeded. He has devised an intriguing theoretical framework and applied it to interesting issues in public choice and public finance, and I am comfortable recommending it to all scholars working on these topics, broadly conceived.' --Alexander William Salter, Public Choice'Wagner sees a complex web of interrelations ("entanglements") between the public and private spheres of human action in which neither set of actors operates independently of the other. Combining insights from Austrian economics, such as the impossibility of economic calculation in the absence of explicit price and profit signals, the methodological individualism of public choice scholars and an analytical approach that rejects partial equilibrium models in favor of ''systems thinking'' about markets and governments, Politics as a Peculiar Business ranges widely to ask and answer important questions about the foundations of a free society, including how to undo the "Faustian bargain" between citizens and an overweening state.' --William F. Shughart II, Utah State University, US'Political competition, like market competition, is a discovery process. But politics involves many people paying different costs to settle on one outcome, where markets involve many people responding in different ways to a single market price. As Wagner points out in this lively book, the two processes are ''entangled,'' so analyses that separate politics and markets mislead. Worse, politics have ensnared markets, as mechanisms created to protect economic liberty increasingly promote political control instead. Politics in the US is a business, a peculiar business. And Wagner's book is a profound step toward understanding the reasons, and implications, of this fact.' --Michael C. Munger, Duke University, US
