First edition, first printing. 8vo. xii, 195, [1] pp. Original yellowish-grey cloth, spine lettered in red, dust jacket (slight lean to text block; jacket with some chipping to tips of spine panel and upper corners, a few tiny nicks and short closed tears to edges, still a very good copy overall). New York, Academic Press, 1977.
‘Democracy in Deficit is one of the early comprehensive attempts to apply the basic principles of public-choice analysis to macroeconomic theory and policy. The book serves to bolster Buchanan’s central beliefs in the necessity of a balanced-budget amendment to the U.S. Constitution and in monetary rules rather than central bank discretion’ (Online Library of Liberty). According to Robert D. Tollison in his foreword to Vol. 8 of Buchanan’s Collected Works, ‘The central purpose of the book was to examine the simple precepts of Keynesian economics through the lens of public-choice theory. The basic discovery was that Keynesian economics had a bias toward deficits in terms of political self-interest’.
