Gordon Tullock's Scholarly Legacy: Extracting It from Buchanan's Shadow

Both were social theorists, with their divergent research programs constituting a yin and yang of liberal political economy. Tullock, however, unlike Buchanan, never created an overview of his research program, leaving him to be perceived in significant measure as simply supplying the homo economicus needed to complement Buchanan's constitutional political economy. (Wagner 1987a, 33-34, emphasis added) The high value of Tullock's large body of work is attested to by his being named a Distinguished Fellow of the American Economic Association in 1997, in addition to being honored by other professional associations. The actual drafting of the manuscript took place during the 1959-60 academic year while Tullock was a member of the International Studies Department at the University of South carolina, where he served until 1962, when he returned to the University of Virginia as an associate professor.