Die soziale Konstruktion konstitutioneller Präferenzen: Eine alternative Verwendungsweise der Ordnungsökonomik in der europäischen Verfassungsdiskussion

Horst Hegmann

No 50, MZES Working Papers from MZES

Abstract: Constitutional economists perceive a constitution as a complex exchange contract. All citizens grant rights to each other and surrender some of their own options because they hope to benefit from their fellow citizens doing the same. Like a simple exchange contract a constitution is considered to be legitimate if all partners can agree to it in a voluntary and informed manner. Reform efforts have to meet the Pareto criterion. This approach works reasonably well in the context of microeconomic model-building because here the necessary individual preferences and cognitions are simply taken as given. To get a similar basis for any real world question, however, an unrealisable collection of information would be required. Therefore, economists often achieve their results in using stylised constructions of individual preferences and cognitions. For many questions this is useful. But especially in the context of European integration another application may be advocated: Constitutional economists can also take the idea of a Pareto-optimal social contract as a regulative idea to provide a purpose to the public discourse on Europe's constitution. Starting from the intention to improve the rules of the game, all citizens can then discuss differing viewpoints without determining beforehand what others should want and think. They can then use the converging results to determine conjointly public goods and discuss ways to provide them. Seen from this angle, economists are no longer hard-nosed experts telling idealists how people really behave and how they should be treated within by appropriate institutions. They rather provide a more or less uncontroversial framework allowing citizens of equal status to deliberate on the best ways to look at their situation and the possibilities to improve it

Keywords: constitution building; political economy; polity building; sociological institutionalism (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2002-08-27
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