Sham Constitutions

Aristotelian constitutions

One of the chief problems about discussing any aspect of Aristotle's political thought, but especially his thinking about constitutions, is the apparent disorder of the Politics. The relatively loose and dialectical nature of the argument is certainly responsible for some of its unevenness: the repetitions, the omissions of promised discussions of particular topics, and the sudden turns, perhap...

Trusting Constitutions

Two explanations for the importance of trusting constitutions are offe-red : First, constitutions that convey trust towards citizens have posi-tive effects by fostering civic virtue. A crucial factor of a trusting con-stitution is the extent to which the citizens are allowed to actively par-ticipate in the political process. We present empirical evidence thatparticipation vi...

Fiscal Constitutions

1 A partial draft of this paper was circulated under the title ‘‘Discretionary Policy and Economic Volatility’’ in October 1995. We thank Robert Becker, Camelia Bejan, Marco Celentani, V. V. Chari, Russell Cooper, John Driffill, David Levine, Rody Manuelli, Albert Marcet, Ken West, and Bill Zame for helpful comments, without implicating them in the results. Earlier versions of the paper were pr...

Viable Tax Constitutions

Taxation is only sustainable if the general public complies with it. This observation is uncontroversial with tax practitioners but has been ignored by the public finance tradition, which has interpreted tax constitutions as binding contracts by which the power to tax is irretrievably conferred by individuals to government, which can then levy any tax it chooses. However, in the absence of an o...

Constitutions and Democratic Breakdowns