Consolidated democracy, constitutional stability, and the rule of law

Nadeem Naqvi, Bernhard Neumärker and Gerald Pech ()

MPRA Paper from University Library of Munich, Germany

Abstract: What sets a consolidated democracy apart? We argue that the expectation that under the rule of law a law-abiding government will not enforce the unlawful acts of its predecessor creates incentives for agents - such as members of the civil service or law enforcement agencies - not to comply with such acts. Thus, even an opportunistic government may find it in its best interest to abide by constitutional rules or, once it has been in violation, to reinstate the legal order. If so, the government contributes to its own punishment and agents’ expectations are self-fulfilling. Thus the rule of law has instrumental value in stabilizing the constitutional order. We also provide a theoretical explanation of the empirical distinction between consolidated and transitory liberal democracies and we explain why consolidated democracies are likely to stave off populist challenges.

Keywords: Constitution; dynamic policy constraints; enforcement mechanism; populism (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D2 D78 K10 K42 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018-04-22
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-law
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/86316/1/MPRA_paper_86316.pdf original version (application/pdf)

Related works:
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:pra:mprapa:86316

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in MPRA Paper from University Library of Munich, Germany Ludwigstraße 33, D-80539 Munich, Germany. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Joachim Winter ().