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The Politician and the Judge: Accountability in Government

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Author Info
Eric Maskin () (School of Social Science, Institute for Advanced Study)
Jean Tirole () (Institut d'Economie Industrielle)

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Abstract

We build a simple model to capture the major virtues and drawbacks of making public officials accountable (i.e., subjecting them to reelection): On the one hand, accountablity allows the public to screen and discipline their officials; on the other, it may induce those officials to pander to public opinion and put too little weight on minority welfare. We study when decision-making powers should be allocated to the public directly (direct democracy), to accountable officials (called “politicians”), or to nonaccountable officials (called “judges”).

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File URL: http://www.sss.ias.edu/publications/papers/econpaper20.pdf
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Publisher Info
Paper provided by Institute for Advanced Study, School of Social Science in its series Economics Working Papers with number 0020.

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Length: 46 pages
Date of creation: Mar 2004
Date of revision:
Publication status: Published in American Economic Review, 94: 1034-1054
Handle: RePEc:ads:wpaper:0020

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Related research
Keywords: Accountability Pandering Separation of Powers Constitutional Design Redistributive Politics Minority Rights

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Find related papers by JEL classification:
H1 - Public Economics - - Structure and Scope of Government
H7 - Public Economics - - State and Local Government; Intergovernmental Relations
K4 - Law and Economics - - Legal Procedure, the Legal System, and Illegal Behavior

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