Why Do Voters Dismantle Checks and Balances?
ScienceBlogs.com
February 16, 2013
Posted by William M. Connolley
A fascinating paper, Why Do Voters Dismantle Checks and Balances?
by Daron Acemoglu, James A. Robinson and Ragnar Torvik (h/t FE). There
is a pile of maths in there, but you don’t really need it and I only
skimmed it.
>From the conclusions:
“In many weakly-institutionalized democracies, particularly in Latin
America, voters have recently dismantled constitutional checks and
balances that are commonly thought to limit presidential rents and
abuses of power. In this paper, we develop an equilibrium model of
checks and balances in which voters may vote for the removal of such
constraints on presidential power. Our main argument is simple: checks
and balances are indeed effective (at least partially) in reducing
presidential discretion and prevent policies that are not in line with
the interests of the majority of the citizens. This naturally reduces
presidential rents, which is however a double-edged sword. By reducing
presidential rents, checks and balances make it cheaper to bribe or
influence politicians through non-electoral means such as lobbying and
bribes. In weakly-institutionalized polities where such non-electoral
influences, particularly by the better organized elite, are a major
concern, voters may prefer a political system without checks and
balances as a way of insulating politicians from these influences. In
consequence, voters may dismantle checks and balances, implicitly
accepting a certain amount of politician rent or politicians’ pet
policies that they do not like, in order to ensure redistribution when
they believe that the rich elite can influence politics through
non-electoral means.”
They provide examples from Venezuela and Ecuador to illustrate their
ideas. The basic idea, restated, is that the poor get to elect the
pols, but the rich get to bribe them, so the poor may prefer pols too
rich to bribe.
Note that their model is a steady-state one; it includes nothing about
effects such as the country falling apart as megalomaniac Prez’s ruin
the economy. Nonetheless, that process is slow enough, and deltas from
the current state are what count, so voters might, in a
prisoners-dilemma sort of way, choose to ignore that problem.
This has eerie echoes of Hobbes (which the paper fails to cite, tsk
tsk, young folk nowadays):
“The difference between these three kinds of Commonwealth consisteth
not in the difference of power, but in the difference of convenience
or aptitude to produce the peace and security of the people; for which
end they were instituted. And to compare monarchy with the other two,
we may observe: first, that whosoever beareth the person of the
people, or is one of that assembly that bears it, beareth also his own
natural person. And though he be careful in his politic person to
procure the common interest, yet he is more, or no less, careful to
procure the private good of himself, his family, kindred and friends;
and for the most part, if the public interest chance to cross the
private, he prefers the private: for the passions of men are commonly
more potent than their reason. From whence it follows that where the
public and private interest are most closely united, there is the
public most advanced. Now in monarchy the private interest is the same
with the public. The riches, power, and honour of a monarch arise only
from the riches, strength, and reputation of his subjects. For no king
can be rich, nor glorious, nor secure, whose subjects are either poor,
or contemptible, or too weak through want, or dissension, to maintain
a war against their enemies; whereas in a democracy, or aristocracy,
the public prosperity confers not so much to the private fortune of
one that is corrupt, or ambitious, as doth many times a perfidious
advice, a treacherous action, or a civil war.”
In fact Hobbes has a somewhat different intent there, so I’m being
unfair to the authors. He’s explaining why Monarchy (effectively,
Presidential rule is Monarchy) is better than other forms of
ogvernment. Elsewhere, he does say that if the pols are corrupt,
you’re better off with only one of them. I don’t think he ever
mentions the too-rich-to-bribe argument, though.
http://www.bi.edu/InstitutterFiles/Samfunns%C2%B0konomi/CAMP/Working_CAMP_1-2013.pdf