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Ulysses and the Rent-Seekers: The Benefits and Challenges of Constitutional Constraints on Leviathan

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. A constitutionally constrained government may be viewed as an attractive arrangement in that it may limit the rent-seeking behavior by narrowly motivated special interest groups and instead support policies of a Pareto-improving character. However, the introduction of constitutional constraints may themselves turn out to be problematic, since institutional solutions to suboptimal arrangements presuppose that the agents are capable of overcoming problems of the very nature that the solutions are intended to overcome in the first place. This makes it unlikely that general interest promoting constitutional constraints on governments will be successfully adopted.

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  • Kurrild-Klitgaard, Peter, 2005. "Ulysses and the Rent-Seekers: The Benefits and Challenges of Constitutional Constraints on Leviathan," Ratio Working Papers 68, The Ratio Institute.
  • Handle: RePEc:hhs:ratioi:0068
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    Cited by:

    1. Justesen, Mogens K. & Kurrild-Klitgaard, Peter, 2007. "The constitution of economic growth: Testing the prosperity effects of a Madisonian model on a panel of countries 1980‐2000," MPRA Paper 36063, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    2. Peter Kurrild-Klitgaard, 2012. "Modeling constitutional choice: reflections on The Calculus of Consent 50 years on," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 152(3), pages 407-413, September.
    3. Pál Czeglédi, 2014. "The theory of interventionism as an Austrian theory of slowdowns," The Review of Austrian Economics, Springer;Society for the Development of Austrian Economics, vol. 27(4), pages 419-449, December.

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    rent-seeking; constitutions; institutions; self-interest; Prisoners' Dilemma; constraints;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D72 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - Political Processes: Rent-seeking, Lobbying, Elections, Legislatures, and Voting Behavior

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