A Utopia? Government Without Territorial Monopoly

Bruno Frey

No 47, IEW - Working Papers from Institute for Empirical Research in Economics - University of Zurich

Abstract: We normally take it for granted: a government or state has its corresponding territory. This paper shows that government need not have a territorial monopoly. The paper advances a practical, constitutional proposal, based on the notion that there are meaningful government units, whose major characteristic is not the territorial extension but its function. The constitution proposal allows for the emergence of governmental organizations, which will be called FOCJ according to the acronym for "Functional, Overlapping, Competing Jurisdictions�. Their territory is variable, and they do not have a territorial monopoly over it. Rather, they are in competition with other such FOCJ, and they are, moreover, exposed to political competition.

Keywords: federalism; constitutional economics; public choice; monopoly on territory (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: H11 H4 H5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (13)

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