Non-Majoritarian Institutions - A Menace to Constitutional Democracy?

Arbeitspapier

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.

Object Details

• Language: Englisch

References and Relationships

• Bibliographic citation: Series: ILE Working Paper Series ; No. 68

Classification and Topics

• Classification: Wirtschaft ; Structure, Scope, and Performance of Government ; Human Rights Law; Gender Law ; Comparative Analysis of Economic Systems
• Subject: Nonmajoritarian institutions ; constitutional democracy ; technocracy ; independent regulatory agencies ; populism ; social contract theory

Contributors, Location and Time

• Event: Geistige Schöpfung
• (who): Voigt, Stefan
• Event: Veröffentlichung
• (who): University of Hamburg, Institute of Law and Economics (ILE)
• (where): Hamburg
• (when): 2023

Further information

• Handle: http://hdl.handle.net/10419/268754
• Last update: 20.09.2024, 8:23 AM CEST