IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/kap/pubcho/v117y2003i1-2p99-124.html

Constitutionalism, Division of Power and Transaction Costs

Author

Listed:
  • Berggren, Niclas
  • Karlson, Nils

Abstract

According to many democracy theorists, there is an unavoidable trade-off between constitutionalism and the need for political action. This paper criticizes that belief. Rather, it argues that a division of power, while sometimes entailing high political transaction costs, can nevertheless be beneficial and that it is not necessarily the case that a division of power does entail high transaction costs. The analysis expands the framework of Buchanan and Tullock (1962). Constitutionalism is thus defended against one of its main perceived deficiencies: its bringing about gridlock. This does not always happen, and when it does, it is often a good thing. Copyright 2003 by Kluwer Academic Publishers

Suggested Citation

  • Berggren, Niclas & Karlson, Nils, 2003. "Constitutionalism, Division of Power and Transaction Costs," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 117(1-2), pages 99-124, October.
    • Handle: RePEc:kap:pubcho:v:117:y:2003:i:1-2:p:99-124
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://journals.kluweronline.com/issn/0048-5829/contents
    File Function: link to full text
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to look for a different version below or

    for a different version of it.

    Other versions of this item:

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Mogens Justesen & Peter Kurrild-Klitgaard, 2014. "Erratum to: Institutional interactions and economic growth: the joint effects of property rights, veto players and democratic capital," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 160(1), pages 291-291, July.
    2. Niclas Berggren & Christian Bjørnskov, 2022. "Political institutions and academic freedom: evidence from across the world," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 190(1), pages 205-228, January.
    3. Markus Leibrecht & Hans Pitlik, 2014. "Generalised Trust, Institutional and Political Constraints on the Executive and Deregulation of Markets," WIFO Working Papers 481, WIFO.
    4. Mehrdad Vahabi, 2011. "Appropriation, violent enforcement, and transaction costs: a critical survey," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 147(1), pages 227-253, April.
    5. Wohlgemuth, Michael, 2004. "The Communicative Character of Capitalistic Competition: A Hayekian response to the Habermasian challenge," Freiburg Discussion Papers on Constitutional Economics 04/1, Walter Eucken Institut e.V..
    6. Niclas Berggren, 2012. "The Calculus of Consent: some Swedish connections," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 152(3), pages 313-321, September.
    7. Vahabi,Mehrdad, 2019. "The Political Economy of Predation," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9781107591370, January.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • D70 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - General
    • H11 - Public Economics - - Structure and Scope of Government - - - Structure and Scope of Government

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:kap:pubcho:v:117:y:2003:i:1-2:p:99-124. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.