ABSTRACT
The neoclassical economists of the 1930's limited their models to the economy, that is to the system of production and exchange mediated by money. They explicitly excluded politics, which they defined as the arena of rational deliberation about the legal framework of economy. The extension to politics was sketched in Robert Dahl and Charles Lindblom's Politics, Economics, and Welfare but first worked out systematically in Anthony Downs' An Economic Theory of Democracy. According to Edward Banfield, the big-city mayor and city politicians in general can be regarded as small businessmen. The mayor operates under the imperative of maintaining and if possible increasing his stocks, both of commodities and of working capital. The many politician-businessmen in the urban political system all operate under the same imperative, and must therefore calculate costs and returns carefully in their constant business dealings with each other. The expansion of the neoclassical perspective to politics and interpersonal relations is a consequence of its claim to universality.
