Norman Barry (1944-2008)
SUGGESTED
More than is usual amongst political theorists, Norman had a profound grasp of economics. No doubt this derived from his early immersion in the work of Friedrich von Hayek and the publication of Hayek’s Social and Economic Philosophy (1979). His very unfashionable view that liberty depended ultimately on the defence of property led him naturally to ‘public choice’ theory and the study of whether constitutional limits to the domain of democratic collective decision making could ever be sustained in the long run. As a scholar who had taken a course against the orthodoxy of the age, his Chair at the University of Buckingham provided a congenial academic environment, while his long association with The Institute of Economic Affairs (as an author and as a member of the Advisory Council) helped to provide him with a network of contacts throughout the world.
A conference to mark Norman’s life and work will be held at the University of Buckingham next year.
7 thoughts on “Norman Barry (1944-2008)”
Comments are closed.
Norman sparked my interest in the Salamanca school with an excellent article in Economic Affairs just after I became Editorial and Programme Director. He also has a very nice chapter in our recent book The Legal Foundations of Free Markets which I assume was his last piece of writing.
Norman sparked my interest in the Salamanca school with an excellent article in Economic Affairs just after I became Editorial and Programme Director. He also has a very nice chapter in our recent book The Legal Foundations of Free Markets which I assume was his last piece of writing.
I first met Norman at a Liberty Fund Conference in the US. His book on liberalism, libertarianism, and classical liberal thinking constituted the text of the seminar. That meeting with him caused a number of important locks to open up in my thinking about liberty and public policy.
Bill Beach
I first met Norman at a Liberty Fund Conference in the US. His book on liberalism, libertarianism, and classical liberal thinking constituted the text of the seminar. That meeting with him caused a number of important locks to open up in my thinking about liberty and public policy.
Bill Beach
Arthur Seldon used to refer to him very affectionately as ‘Norah Batty’, a character in ‘Last of the Summer Wine’.
Arthur Seldon used to refer to him very affectionately as ‘Norah Batty’, a character in ‘Last of the Summer Wine’.
Norman Barry was my politics tutor at Buckingham, a likeable eccentric, but the epitome of what was (and is) wrong with the University, namely that it has been better at importing proponents of classical liberalism than at producing and exporting them – the opposite of Austria, which produced and exported the likes of Mises and Hayek, but is one of the most statist economies in Western Europe.
How many of Barry’s students have gone on to great things in politics, including working in think tanks like the IEA? He was hardly Vernon Bogdanor, much less being to politics what Norman Stone has been to history!
Buckingham is an intellectual desert, and the School of Humanities is at best an Economics Department in disguise (why else would Martin Ricketts be its Dean?) and at worst a sheltered workshop cum sinecure for libertarian fantasists like Barry subsidised by Nigerian lawyers and Malaysian accountants too stupid to notice or care what their money was being wasted on.