… is from page 31 of the 2000 Liberty Fund edition of Geoffrey Brennan’s and James Buchanan’s important 1985 volume, The Reason of Rules:
Almost all of our ordinary behavior takes place within a well-defined structure of legal rules. In politics, however, the notion that collectivities, governments, also behave and should behave within the constraints of well-defined rules seems less “natural.” The notion that constitutions define the limits of political authority is an abstraction that seems difficult for many to comprehend.