Beyond market failure: Volitional pragmatism as a new theory of public policy

The economic approach to public policy, based on theories of rational choice, market failure, and welfare economics, is plagued by conceptual flaws that prevent the offering of coherent and plausible guidance about what is best to do. Volitional pragmatism brings enhanced explanatory power to the problem of understanding individual action as well as collective action by parliaments, courts, and administrative agencies. I offer here a new theory of individual and collective action that avoids the crippling circularity of standard theories of public policy.