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Democracy and the Economy: An Analysis of Buchanan′s Views on Political Psychology Alejandra Salinas Abstract: Buchanan′s notion of “parental socialism” refers to the attitude of many persons who are “afraid to be free” and do not want to face responsibility for their own actions. His diagnosis is that this behavioral fact triggers the demand for a Welfare State, thus extending collective activities over individual liberties. I claim that this psychological assumption is in tension with Buchanan′s public choice perspective: if what people pursue is wealth maximization, they will try to partially minimize the risks and costs linked to that objective by shifting the burden of welfare provision onto the State. In this light, a calculus of maximization and not fear would prevail in feeding parental socialism. Introduction Buchanan (2005) identifies three types of socialisms -managerial o central planning, paternalistic and distributional- based in “top-down” justifications (from the government to the people). He adds another type, “bottom-up” driven, which he names parentalism and describes as “the attitudes of persons who seek to have values imposed upon them by other persons, by the state or by transcendental forces”(2005:23, italics in the original). In his view, this motivation held by many persons is reflected in the rejection of the responsibilities associated with individual liberty and in the consequent demand for dependency on a parental State. The institutional manifestation of the dependency sentiment would be the extension of collectively controlled activities. Ultimately, the raison d′etre of parentalism would be a prevalent sentiment of fear and the need to seek reassurance of order and predictability in a context of uncertainty. Buchanan′s “parental” postulates challenge many of his prior assumptions -which I shall call the “classical” assumptions- and pose several questions to the scholar interested in the general relation between democracy an