A reading of the Spanish Constitution (1978)

Brennan, Geoffrey; Pardo, José Casas

doi:10.1007/bf02393226

Cited by 18 publications

(7 citation statements)

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“…This expectation also seems reasonable when considering that constitutions are supposed to state and protect the key rules and general guiding principles forming the building blocks of a democratic political system (see Brennan and Hamlin, 2008; Elkins, 2010). While constitutions lend special attention and, even more importantly, protection to these principles (Benoit, 2007: 382; Flinders, 2010: 55), the more specific institutional design may then typically be undertaken via ordinary law (Brennan and Casas Pardo, 1991: 54). Following the above, it may thus be assumed that the principle of representation is defined within any constitution.…”

Section: The Constitutional Embeddedness Of the Principle Of Representationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Principles of representation throughout the world: Constitutional provisions and electoral systems

Raabe

2014

International Political Science Review

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Focusing on the effects of singular technical elements, electoral system research has neglected the question of whether specific systems are supposed to achieve overarching normative goals. Due to their importance for any polity, such principles of representation are widely assumed to be determined in the constitution. Therefore, a world-wide survey of constitutions presents a promising opportunity to study electoral systems’ general goals in a comparative manner. In providing such a survey and investigating the causes, contents and consequences of constitutional provisions, this analysis shows that constitutional embeddedness of the electoral system is contingent upon factors such as region (with constitutional principles especially typical in Europe and Latin America) and decision-context. Importantly, the ‘proportionality principle’ is much more prone to enter a constitution and receive increased protection than its antipode, the ‘majority principle’. Furthermore, mixed principles calling for a balance between aforementioned extremes exist, suggesting that mixed electoral systems are not always merely technical compromises. Finally, constitutional embeddedness seems to have a context-dependent effect on specific technical elements but generally leads to greater stability of the overall electoral system. The key implication for future research is that the normative principle-dimension of electoral systems has to be considered alongside their technical design.

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Section: The Constitutional Embeddedness Of the Principle Of Representationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Principles of representation throughout the world: Constitutional provisions and electoral systems

Raabe

2014

International Political Science Review

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“…Moreover, uncertainty may be increased through the adoption of a constitution which leaves scope for a wide range of constitutional structures. As Brennan and Pardo [1991] have pointed out, such flexibility may have facilitated the adoption of the Spanish Constitution by securing popular and political consensus. On the other hand, these authors recognize that under such a constitution citizens are playing a political-economic game without rules.…”

Section: -The Perceived Fairness Of the Terms Of Co-operationmentioning

confidence: 99%

On the Viability of Potentially Divided Multi-Ethnic States

Kyriacou

2001

Journal of Public Finance and Public Choice

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This paper examines the viability of inter-ethnic cooperation from the perspective afforded by the economic approach to institutional analysis. Four factors are seen to affect viability, namely the relative strength of each ethnic group in the non-cooperative setting, the perceived fairness of die terms of cooperation, die continuing influence of informal rules which may be inimical to cooperation and finally, the judicial enforcement and legislative maintenance of the terms of cooperation. The discussion generates a number of insights into the desirable nature of die institutions of potentially divided multi-ethnic states.

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“…One exception is Brennan and Pardo's (1991) examination of the Spanish Constitution of 1978. Noting that the constitution includes vague statements of qualifications on rights, they note that this deviation from public choice ideals may have been necessary to secure agreement among a divided public.…”

Section: Constitution-making Processesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Public choice theory, arising out of modern economics, tends to be skeptical about the value of minimal rights to education, housing and social welfare, as it considers the market the superior institution to provide these goods (Brennan and Pardo 1991). Yet the increasing demand for positive rights suggests that these are not merely the product of rent-seeking by interest groups.…”

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confidence: 99%

Public Choice and Constitutional Design

Ginsburg¹

2010

Research Handbook on Public Choice and Public Law

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This chapter reviews the literature on public choice theory and constitutional design, focusing in particular on the sub-discipline of constitutional political economy. The basic framework of constitutional political economy has been in place for several decades and has produced some important insights into particular institutions. Other institutions, however, have been ignored, and there is a relatively small amount of empirical work testing the propositions. The chapter summarizes the work to date and identifies areas for more attention in the future. The chapter first reviews the core assumption that constitutional politics are really different than ordinary politics, and the corollary that the constitutional level is more likely to produce public-regarding behavior. It finds these assumptions to be less than fully convincing, in part because constitutional endurance seems to require some level of interest group behavior, and because constitutions can be transformed through amendment.Thanks to Adam Fleisher and Emily Winston for excellent research assistance. Thanks also to Daniel Farber and Saul Levmore for helpful comments and to Maxwell Stearns for sharing a draft of his forthcoming volume with Todd Zywicki (2009). Online readers should note that this piece will appear in a larger collection of papers, and so intentionally leaves many particular topics of interest to other papers in the volume. 2 Public choice and the centrality of constitutional designConstitutional design is a central concern of public choice and its related discipline of constitutional political economy. Public choice, typically described as the application of economics to political science, seeks to understand problems of aggregating preferences in collective decision-making (Mueller 1997; Farber and Frickey 1990). Constitutional political economy focuses more narrowly on the role of rules in structuring and constraining decision-making, shifting the terrain from choice within rules to the choice of higher order "constitutional" rules. As Buchanan and Brennan (1980 at 10) put it, "If rules influence outcomes and if some outcomes are "better" than others, it follows that to the extent that rules can be chosen, the study and analysis of comparative rules and institutions become proper objects of our Arrow famously showed that under certain plausible conditions, there is no voting mechanism, or indeed any other mechanism, that is guaranteed to prevent cycling among options in pairwise voting:any choice that beats another will in turn be beaten when paired against the third. The outcome of such 3 a decision-making process will depend entirely on the way in which the choices are presented. Thus control over the agenda is crucial for determining outcomes (Cooter 2000, pp. 38-46). Because the outcome of collective choice mechanisms was inherently unstable and reflected mere agenda control or perhaps insincere voting on the part of strategic actors, the idea that collective choices reflected the "true" public interest was suspect. ...

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A reading of the Spanish Constitution (1978)

Cited by 18 publications

References 5 publications

Principles of representation throughout the world: Constitutional provisions and electoral systems

Principles of representation throughout the world: Constitutional provisions and electoral systems

On the Viability of Potentially Divided Multi-Ethnic States

Public Choice and Constitutional Design

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