Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Figures
- List of Tables
- Preface
- PART 1 POLITICAL POWER AND ECONOMIC ANALYSIS
- PART 2 IDEOLOGY, PRESCRIPTION, AND POLITICAL POWER COEFFICIENTS
- 7 Political Power, Ideology, and Political Organizational Structures
- 8 Political Power, Influence, and Lobbying
- 9 Constitutional Prescription and Political Power Coefficients
- PART 3 ANALYSIS OF SPECIFIC STRUCTURES
- PART 4 EMPIRICAL APPLICATIONS OF POLITICAL POWER ESTIMATION
- References
- Index
9 - Constitutional Prescription and Political Power Coefficients
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Figures
- List of Tables
- Preface
- PART 1 POLITICAL POWER AND ECONOMIC ANALYSIS
- PART 2 IDEOLOGY, PRESCRIPTION, AND POLITICAL POWER COEFFICIENTS
- 7 Political Power, Ideology, and Political Organizational Structures
- 8 Political Power, Influence, and Lobbying
- 9 Constitutional Prescription and Political Power Coefficients
- PART 3 ANALYSIS OF SPECIFIC STRUCTURES
- PART 4 EMPIRICAL APPLICATIONS OF POLITICAL POWER ESTIMATION
- References
- Index
Summary
Introduction
The political power and bargaining paradigm can be used to evaluate and assess alternative constitutional rules, or the rules by which rules are made. Even though our framework focuses on the endogenous selection of public policies, it embeds a set of constitutional rules and other institutional structures. Alternative settings on these “rules” can be normatively evaluated in terms of their implications for the distribution of political power (Chapter 5) and the degree to which the public interest is effectively pursued. In essence, actual constitutional settings determine the boundaries of the tradeoff between public and special interests. Thus, the political power and bargaining paradigm allows prescriptive investigations of alternative constitutional rules that can be given both theoretical and empirical content to the constitutional determination of various types of governance structures. As noted in Chapter 1, the relationship between the underlying constitution and the “preference weights” emerging in the governance structure quantifies what Steiner (1969) recognized long ago, namely, that some solution to the “power coefficient” problem is implicit or explicit in any public action that might be taken.
An important distinction can be drawn between constitutions and institutional structures. As defined by North (1991), institutions are human designed constraints or rules that shape human interaction. They reduce uncertainty by providing structure to political, social, and economic exchange.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Political Power and Economic PolicyTheory, Analysis, and Empirical Applications, pp. 177 - 190Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2011