Good Lawmaking, Democracy, and Accountability

Abstract

In the present paper, we analyze good lawmaking under the general aspect of democracy and accountability. We present briefly the procedure of lawmaking and accountability under the direct democracy of ancient Athens during the Classical times (508–323 BC), giving one characteristic example, followed with a comparison with modern lawmaking under representative democracy. We argue that accountability in present-day democracies has three drawbacks, that are related to (i) the principal-agent problem, (ii) the fact that accountability is only periodic since elections are held every four years (iii) the information asymmetry between government and citizens, which makes difficult for citizens to understand the issues (regarding lawmaking) in depth or hold a government accountable for its actions and decisions on various matters. We explain how the ancient Athenian democrats dealt effectively with these institutional inconsistencies. We finally conclude by offering some proposals for improving the quality of democracy nowadays, inspired by the functioning of the Athenian-related institutions.