Buchanan and Clubs, How Dubious Was the Concept? A Comment on Darity, Camara, and Maclean

In a recent article, William Darity, M’Balou Camara, and Nancy MacLean (2023) argue that economist W.H. Hutt was a white supremacist. In the course of their analysis, Darity et al. refer to a claim Hutt made about “exclusive clubs”, that they link to James Buchanan’s article on clubs (1965). As a result, Hutt appears to have been inspired by Buchanan, and Buchanan’s theory of club seems to be built to justify segregation. This reinforces the claim McLean made about Buchanana in her Democracy in Chains (2017). The purpose of this note is to show that no evidence can be given to defend the idea that Buchanan’s theory of club would have been envisaged as a segregationist tool. Buchanan was trying to deal with a problem of public finance – the pricing of public goods.

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