Constitutions and Policy Comparisons

David Hugh-Jones

Journal of Theoretical Politics, 2009, vol. 21, issue 1, 25-61

Abstract: Voters in democracies can learn from the experience of neighbouring states: about policy in a direct democracy (`policy experimentation'), about the quality of their politicians in a representative democracy (`yardstick competition'). Learning between states creates spillovers from policy choice, and also from constitutional choice. I model these spillovers in a simple principal-agent framework, and show that voter welfare may be maximized by a mixture of representative and direct democratic states. Because of this, empirical work examining voter welfare under direct democracy may need to be reinterpreted. Also, I show that the optimal mix of constitutions cannot always be achieved in a constitutional choice equilibrium involving many states.

Keywords: constitutional choice; direct democracy; policy experimentation; yardstick competition (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2009
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (6)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:jothpo:v:21:y:2009:i:1:p:25-61

DOI: 10.1177/0951629808097283

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