Abstract

James Buchanan wrote many short pieces on human nature and on the weaknesses of the rational choice model used by mainstream economics. Although he normally used such models in his own work, he recognized that their usefulness was limited to only a subset of choice settings. This chapter provides the rule-based model of choice that Buchanan may have had in the back of his mind when writing his critiques. It is not an effort at mind reading, but rather develops a model of rule-bound but not rule-determined choice that is consistent with Buchanan’s remarks on human nature and with contemporary research from evolutionary psychology. It develops a theory of self-constitutions or homo constitutionalus.