Non-Majoritarian Institutions - A Menace to Constitutional Democracy?
Over the last couple of decades, non-majoritarian institutions (NMIs) have been introduced in many countries. Of late, they have been criticized as promoting technocracy to the detriment of democracy. A number of political scientists even argue that they would strengthen populists and be, hence, one reason for democratic backsliding. This paper does three things: It firstly briefly discusses the empirical evidence for the claim that NMIs have strengthened populists. It secondly argues that not all NMIs are born equal and therefore proposes a taxonomy enabling us to distinguish different types. And it finally discusses the question how the delegation of policy-making competence to experts can be legitimized relying on a specific version of social contract theory. To develop the argument, the interdependence cost calculus developed by Buchanan and Tullock (1962) is modified by explicitly including the respective decision-making procedure, distinguishing between direct democracy, representative democracy, and expert decision-making.
Year of publication: |
2023
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Authors: | Voigt, Stefan |
Publisher: |
Hamburg : University of Hamburg, Institute of Law and Economics (ILE) |
Subject: | Nonmajoritarian institutions | constitutional democracy | technocracy | independent regulatory agencies | populism | social contract theory |
Saved in:
freely available
Series: | |
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Type of publication: | Book / Working Paper |
Type of publication (narrower categories): | Working Paper |
Language: | English |
Other identifiers: | 1837314004 [GVK] hdl:10419/268754 [Handle] RePEc:zbw:ilewps:68 [RePEc] |
Classification: | H11 - Structure, Scope, and Performance of Government ; k38 ; P51 - Comparative Analysis of Economic Systems |
Source: |
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10013549904
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