ABSTRACT
The preceding essays have shown how the reality of user fees and earmarked taxes is often strikingly different from the normative justifications commonly advanced in support of those fiscal practices. This divergence between norm and reality is, in turn, an understandable result of the incentives contained within prevailing political systems, as the theory of public choice explains. Once it is recognized that political and fiscal outcomes are governed by the constitutional rules that order political activity, constitutional reform of political processes becomes a significant element in any effort to secure improvement. In this concluding chapter I seek to set forth some of the primary elements of and reasoning behind a constitutional perspective on fiscal processes.
