… is from page 167 of the 2000 Liberty Fund edition of Geoffrey Brennan’s and James M. Buchanan’s 1985 volume, The Reason of Rules:
Good games depend on good rules more than they depend on good players.
If you want to change the way a game – including politics – is played, or to change the specific outcomes generally achieved by the game’s players, you will have far more success if you change the rules of the game than it you change the identities of the players or try to change the character of the current players.
(Were he still alive, Jim Buchanan would today celebrate his 95th birthday.)
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