Expressive and Instrumental Voting: The Scylla and Charybdis of Constitutional Political Economy

Eric Crampton () and Andrew Farrant
Additional contact information
Andrew Farrant: George Mason University

Public Economics from University Library of Munich, Germany

Abstract: Brennan and Hamlin (2002) note that expressive voting still holds at the constitutional phase. The argument, when taken to its necessary conclusion, proves quite problematic for Constitutional Political Economy. Veil mechanisms following Buchanan induce expressive voting at the constitutional phase, removing the normative benefits ascribed to the hypothetical unanimity principle. If the constitution is authored by a small group and the veil is thereby removed, instrumental considerations come to bear and the authors of the constitution establish themselves as Oligarch.

Keywords: expressive voting; constitutional political economy; Leviathan (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D72 H10 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 25 pages
Date: 2004-01-07
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cdm, nep-edu, nep-hpe, nep-pbe and nep-pol
Note: Type of Document - pdf; prepared on WinXP; pages: 25. 25 pg pdf document
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Downloads: (external link)
https://econwpa.ub.uni-muenchen.de/econ-wp/pe/papers/0401/0401002.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Expressive and Instrumental Voting: The Scylla and Charybdis of Constitutional Political Economy (2004)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:wpa:wuwppe:0401002

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Public Economics from University Library of Munich, Germany
Bibliographic data for series maintained by EconWPA ( this e-mail address is bad, please contact ).