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9 - The Bonds of Democratic Politics – An Economic Perspective

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 July 2009

By
Stefan Voigt
Edited by
Albert Breton ,
Gianluigi Galeotti ,
Pierre Salmon  and
Ronald Wintrobe
Stefan Voigt
Affiliation:
Department of Economics, University of Kassel
Albert Breton
Affiliation:
University of Toronto
Gianluigi Galeotti
Affiliation:
Università degli Studi di Roma 'La Sapienza', Italy
Pierre Salmon
Affiliation:
Université de Bourgogne, France
Ronald Wintrobe
Affiliation:
University of Western Ontario
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Summary

INTRODUCTION

The welfare state that co-emerged with industrialization and democratization can be interpreted as an attempt to make the fate of the worst off independent of their personal bonds, that is, the ability and the willingness of their personal environment to help in times of need. Majoritarian – democratic – politics tend to be redistributive. Thereby, they reduce the potential value of personal bonds. Economists could thus argue that democratic politics can be expected to lead – at least in the long run – to a loosening of personal bonds. On the other hand, an extended welfare state seems only sustainable if those who are net-payers feel some sort of general solidarity for those they are supporting. In other words, majoritarian decision-making seems to drive out personal bonds but depends on the existence of more general anonymous ones.

It has become fashionable to criticize economic thinking for being too individualist. Some communitarians claim that the individualist approach of economics drives out civic virtue (e.g., Etzioni 1988). Among public choice scholars, a new trend to criticize the simplistic behavioral assumptions of homo oeconomicus seems to be emerging: Frey (1997) states that a constitution for knaves crowds out civic virtue and Brennan and Hamlin (2000) argue in favor of a behavioral model that allows for motivational heterogeneity. In their arguments, the possibility of being interested in the public good plays a central role. Within the confines of this chapter, this could be a bond toward the community.

Type
Chapter
Information
Rational Foundations of Democratic Politics , pp. 147 - 174
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2003

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