Constitutional Evolution

Randall Holcombe

Chapter 8 in The Economic Foundations of Government, 1994, pp 128-141 from Palgrave Macmillan

Abstract: Abstract The economic foundation of government is the exchange of protection for tribute. Without this exchange, life would be, in the words of Hobbes, nasty, brutish, and short. Even theoretical models of anarchy rely on some organized institutions to provide protection for payment, although anarchists do not call their institutions government.1 In the real world, there are two extreme possibilities under which government could be formed, as well as a broad middle ground between the extremes. On one extreme, individuals from another society could forcibly take over a society and impose a government on the society they conquered. At the other extreme, the individuals within a society could agree to form a government and write a constitution — a social contract — that is agreed to by everyone, and that provides the rules under which the new government would operate. In the broad middle ground, an internal revolution could replace the existing governmental structure with one favored by the revolutionaries. Revolutions might be relatively broad-based and popularly supported, like the successful American revolution and the unsuccessful Confederate revolution, or they might be as narrowly based as a military coup. In any case, some constitution will be formed that, explicitly or implicitly, provides the rules under which government will operate.

Keywords: Social Contract; Free Ride; Develop Economy; Winning Coalition; Constitutional Rule (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 1994
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DOI: 10.1007/978-1-349-13230-0_8

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