17
At first glance, this somewhat pessimistic book does not deal directly with the question of
federalism. In fact he rejects consideration of federal systems as ways out of the dilemma from
recent experience
44
or theoretically.
45
But at its core, Limits of Liberty is a book about how to
build communities without the overbearing presence of a state. Buchanan is striving for a set of
shared values, like those enjoyed by members of smaller communities, that can be agreed upon
and enforced without leviathan.
46
In this sense Buchanan is struggling with the Tip O’Neill problem. The former Speaker
of the U.S. House of Representatives (who has about in much in common ideologically with
Buchanan as Karl Marx) is quoted as saying that “all politics is local.” While Buchanan claims
that individuals are his focus, and they are, inevitably examples of individual exchange lead us to
examples about local laws and governments. As was the case in Calculus, Buchanan believes
that the moment we move away from the consensus rules used in smaller political communities
we begin to slide down the slippery slope towards the growth of the state.
While he denies using federalism as a crutch in this book, it’s there as an implicit solution
to much of what he’s arguing for. Smaller, decentralized political communities that operate
according to shared values are, often, those that do not need to rely exclusively on political
institutions like majority rule. While Buchanan doesn’t want to directly address federalism in
this book, he understands that exchanges and property rights are at the core of liberty. In chapter
2 of this book he uses numerous examples to illustrate how individuals in communities can trade
and respect each other with a “set of manners, the customary modes for personal behavior, which
reflects the mutual acceptance of limits.”
47
Implicitly Buchanan is saying that liberty is best protected when exchanges and “politics”
Convention