7 - Problems of democratic politics

Summary

In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself.

(Federalist papers, 51, James Madison)

The rational actor perspective

In chapter 5 we offered a checklist of mechanisms by which institutional devices might bear on social outcomes. The discussion there was abstract in the sense that we were concerned to map out possibilities rather than analyse particular institutions or their role in particular settings. The next step in moving the discussion to the more specific analysis of ‘democratic devices’ – the institutions of democratic politics – is the diagnosis of the essential political problems that these institutions are intended to over-come.

Within the public choice and rational actor political theory traditions, such diagnosis has been a central preoccupation. There are several reasons for this. One is the economist's general predilection against promoting ‘cures’ before the ‘disease’ is properly understood. As public choice scholars have insisted in the context of arguments for state intervention in the face of market failure, the simple recognition that something is wrong does not provide a licence to intervene in any old way. After all, scarcity abounds. And this means that the world will almost always fall short of any abstract ideal. Even in the best feasible state, things will be imperfect.