My paper is dedicated to Bertrand de Jouvenel's political thought. If we look at the critical literature on Jouvenel, we realize that this thinker is commonly regarded by his interpreters as a philosopher influenced only by the classical Liberalism. My paper frames his thoughts into new theoretical paradigms, very close to the contemporary political science.
In works such as “The Ethics of Redistribution” [1953] Jouvenel anticipates the results of the Public Choice Theory, founded by James Buchanan and Gordon Tullock, who wanted to illustrate the origins of the expansionist government in the interests of the various political actors regardless to their political ideas. The redistributive policies can be seen as a system of mechanisms whose function is to legitimize the interests of expansionist bureaucracies and protect well-established interest groups (similar topics are also defended in Jouvenel’s article “The Team against the Committee” [1963]).
