Rules for choosing among public goods: A contractarian approach

This paper asks what rules for supplying and financing public goods would be chosen by individuals at the constitutional level. A new principle of decision-making is proposed. This separates decisions about how much to spend on public goods from decisions about how to allocate this spending among different public goods; the latter decision is made by allowing each individual to determine how his own tax payment will be spent. Analogies are drawn between this principle and proportional representation, tax relief for charities, and certain procedures for providing state support for political parties and churches.