Hobbesian and Contractarian Constitutions

Geoffrey Brennan and Giuseppe Eusepi

A chapter in Law and Economics in Europe and the U.S, 2016, pp 55-73 from Springer

Abstract: Abstract The aim of this paper is to summarise the standard ‘Constitutional political economy’ approach to fiscal constitutions, focusing on the circumstances in which explicitly fiscal restrictions will be called for, and directing attention to the key concerns and attributes of the standard approach—specifically, the contractarian normative framework and the emphasis on feasibility. That standard approach is then contrasted with an explicitly “Hobbesian” approach, where the feasibility of constitutional contract itself is a matter of contention and where for that reason there are limits to the application of standard contractarian notions. It is arguably more useful within the Hobbesian frame to conceive the constitution as a form of covenant, for which the appropriate analytic framework is the ‘trust’ game rather than exchange as such.

Keywords: Fiscal; Constitution; Contractarian; Hobbesian; Covenant; 025; 320 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:euhchp:978-3-319-47471-7_4

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DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-47471-7_4

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