Journal Articles

Constitutions and Policy Comparisons: Direct and Representative Democracy When States Learn From Their Neighbours

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Voters in democracies can learn from the experience of neighbouring states: about policy in a direct democracy (`policy experimentation'), about the quality of their politicians in a representative democracy (`yardstick competition'). Learning between states creates spillovers from policy choice, and also from constitutional choice. I model these spillovers in a simple principal-agent framework, and show that voter welfare may be maximized by a mixture of representative and direct democratic states. Because of this, empirical work examining voter welfare under direct democracy may need to be reinterpreted. Also, I show that the optimal mix of constitutions cannot always be achieved in a constitutional choice equilibrium involving many states.

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Detail Information

Series Title

Journal of Theoretical Politics

Call Number

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Publisher

California : Sage Publication., 2009

Collation

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Language

English

ISBN/ISSN

0951-6298

Classification

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Content Type

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Media Type

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Carrier Type

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Edition

Volume 21, Number 1, January 2009. pp. 25-61

Subject(s)

Direct democracy
Constitutional choice
Policy experimentation
Constitutions and Policy Comparisons

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