Constitutional Political Economy最新文献

The book “Constitutional Landmarks: Supreme Court Decisions on Separation of Powers, Federalism, and Economic Rights” by Charles M. Lamb and Jacob R. Neiheisel offers an in-depth analysis of the role of the United States Supreme Court in shaping legal policy through a series of landmark decisions. The book examines a number of turning-point cases in American legal history, focusing on three key concepts: separation of powers, federalism, and economic rights. Through analyses of cases such as Bowsher v. Synar, Morrison v. Olson, Seila Law LLC v. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, and Lochner v. New York, the author explores how the Supreme Court navigates constitutional boundaries and upholds fundamental principles that shape the country’s legal framework.

Using data on a large sample of nations, this research studies the effects of campaign finance reforms on corruption, including bans on contributions by trade unions and corporations. The focus on campaign finance bans in presidential versus parliamentary democracies is a unique aspect. We find that, while bans on campaign donations to political parties and candidates by trade unions are effective in reducing corruption, their efficacy varies across presidential and parliamentary democracies. Specifically, bans on campaign contributions to political candidates and parties reduce corruption in presidential democracies, but they are ineffective in parliamentary democracies. Campaign contribution bans on corporations are largely ineffective. When a broader measure of institutional quality/enforcement is considered, its effectiveness dominates the effects of individual bans. Some of these findings are unique and suggest that policymakers considering combating corruption should take into account the form of democracy, the type of campaign finance ban, and the nation’s overall institutional quality.

This paper employs a quantitative analysis of the disputes between central and regional government concerning the role of the Italian Constitutional Court, focusing on the context of decentralization initiated during the late 1990s. The econometric evidence demonstrates a significant decrease in favourable outcomes for regional governments following the process of recentralization, which was commenced by central government in 2011 in response to a major financial crisis. The results of this study support the perspective of a centralistic attitude of the courts in litigation concerning subnational governments and provide fresh insights into the role of the courts in the relationship between recentralization and major economic crises.

It has often been claimed that if constitutions are not complied with, they will be changed. Because an ineffective constitutional contract is a bad contract, a lack of enforcement should induce constitutional reform. This paper empirically tests this conjecture based on a dataset of 170 countries from 1950 to 2018. The results indicate that the size of the de jure/de facto gap has no effect on the likelihood of constitutional change as such. However, after differentiating between amendments and replacements as distinct modes of constitutional reform, the results imply that non-compliance robustly increases the probability of constitutional replacement only. This relationship is primarily driven by an implementation gap regarding political and civil rights. Expected moderating effects of interpersonal trust and civil society organizations as catalysts for successful civil reform movements cannot be empirically supported. Overall, this has important consequences for the writers of future constitutions. If reformers desire longevity for their new constitutional framework, they must be aware that utopian promises may backfire by provoking a quick replacement of their rules.

This paper examines the relationship between the work of James Buchanan and Vincent Ostrom. It adds to existing work by providing a comprehensive analysis of Buchanan’s and Ostrom’s changing views about how the ‘logical foundations of constitutional democracy’ should be conceptualised. The paper traces how in the 1960s and 1970s Ostrom took inspiration from the rational choice analysis of constitutional democracy in Buchanan and Tullock’s The Calculus of Consent, explaining how it shaped his reading of key texts in political theory and his analysis of public administration. It then discusses how Buchanan subsequently drew on Ostrom’s notion of artifactual man in developing his understanding of the ‘constitutional attitude’ necessary for individuals to engage in institutional design. It then explores how, from the mid-to-late 1990s, Ostrom became increasingly critical of Buchanan’s reliance on rational choice theory for his analysis of constitutional decision-making, identifying this as a key difference between their views.

We present the core support criterion, a voting criterion satisfied by Instant Runoff Voting (IRV) that is analogous to the Condorcet criterion but reflective of a different majority rule philosophy. Condorcet methods can be thought of as conducting elections between each pair of candidates, counting all ballots to determine the winner of each pair-election. IRV can also be thought of as conducting elections between all pairs of candidates but for each pair-election only counting ballots from voters who do not prefer another major candidate (as determined self-consistently from the IRV social ranking) to the two candidates in contention. The appropriateness of including all ballots or a subset of ballots for a pair-election, depends on whether the society deems the entire or a selected ballot set in compliance with freedom of association, which implies freedom of non-association, for a given pair election. Arguments based on freedom of association rely on more information about an electorate than can be learned from ranked ballots alone. We present a freedom-of-association based argument to explain why IRV may be preferable to Condorcet in some circumstances, including the 2022 Alaska special congressional election and the 2009 Burlington Vermont mayoral election, based on the political context of those elections.

The paper examines the changing role of the European Central Bank over the last 15 years and holds that the ECB has gone through a process of learning by doing, relying on earlier crisis experiences in forming its response to successive crises. This learning process has enabled it to sustain the euro countries against various exogenous shocks both within the power of its mandate and beyond it, implementing novel reforms. We argue, in fact, that crises stimulated institutional innovations such as the introduction of Eurozone banking supervision and the European Banking Union. The latter was a particularly ground-breaking idea, not contemplated by the Treaties, and addressed to exceptional endogenous dynamics. During the last two emergencies, triggered by the pandemic and the war, the ECB seems finally to have learned how to manage crises via a synergic use of available tools.

Despite both chambers of the United States Congress passing budgetary rules to limit deficits and public debts, the deficit and, as a result, public debt, have increased dramatically. Most political economy literature has attributed these phenomena to the tragedy of the fiscal commons or political budget cycles. In contrast, this paper attributes these phenomena to a change in the fiscal constitution—specifically, the Congressional Budget and Impoundment Control Act (CBICA) of 1974. Prior to the passage of the CBIA, the fiscal constitution was such that the Executive Branch led the federal budgeting process. The Executive Branch leading the budgetary process effectively established a constraint on Congress’ propensity to use deficit and public debt finance. The passage of CBICA, however, established a new fiscal constitution that removed this constraint. The CBICA provided Congress with the lead over the budgeting process. This new fiscal constitution established by the CBICA caused an increase in deficits and public debt—despite budgetary rules aiming to stop such increases. Budgetary historical narratives are provided to support the theory.

The objective of this paper is to examine the impact of border policies and the increased militarization of border control practices on the expansion of police powers, the erosion of constitutional constraints and on other institutional spillovers. In recent decades, the Border Patrol has been integrated with the broader national security state as part of the war on drugs and the war on terror. This has entailed the acquisition of military hardware, the incorporation of organizational structures and training originally developed in the military, and increased interaction with the military, intelligence agencies, and defense contractors. The Border Patrol has frequently lent their equipment, personnel, and powers to domestic policing that has only a tangential relationship with border security. Border militarization therefore contributes to expansions in the scope of police powers and the erosion of constitutional constraints. This process undermines functional polycentricity, and thereby alters the incentives and knowledge of political decision-makers.