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The Constitution of Good Societies
228 pages | 6 x 9 | 1996
Cloth edition is not available
ISBN 978-0-271-02555-1 | paper: $27.00 sh
The purpose of this volume is to help develop, through a variety of exploratory essays, the art and science of institutional design. The authors identify themselves with the New Constitutionalism movement, which aims to develop and promote the knowledge necessary for institutional reform and institutional creation through understanding the designer's, creator's, founder's, or reformer's perspective. They look at a variety of good societies as artifacts, as products-at least partly-of design, and consider how such societies can be crafted.
The first part of the volume considers some of the boundaries of what is humanly possible in politico-economic designs and the role in them of deliberation and the processes of adapting to limits. The second part considers different ways of exercising constitutionalist judgment analyzing a variety of cases, including general visions of the good society. Looking at whole societies, and at complexes of institutions, complements and informs the picture of the institutional microscale. Understanding the microscale, on the other hand, often makes the difference between empty slogans and realistic political proposals.
Karol Edward Soltan is Associate Professor of Government and Politics at the University of Maryland at College Park. He is the author of The Causal Theory of Justice (California, 1987). Stephen L. Elkin is Professor of Government and Politics at the University of Maryland at College Park. He is the author of City and Regime in the American Republic (Chicago, 1987). Together they co-edited The New Constitutionalism (Chicago, 1993).
Contents
Introduction:
Imagination, Political Competence, and Institutions Karol Edward
Soltan
Covenants,
Collective Action, and Common-Pool Resources Elinor Ostrom
Constitutional
Choice, Rational Ignorance, and the Limits of Reason Viktor
J. Vanberg and James M. Buchanan
From
Irrationality to Autonomy: Two Sciences of Institutional Design
John S. Dryzek
Institution
Building and Human Nature Karol Edward Soltan
How
to Make a Good Society Charles W. Anderson
The
Constitution of a Good Society: The Case of the Commercial Republic
Stephen L. Elkin
Speculative
Theory and Regime Alternatives: Beyond Socialism and Capitalism
Gar Alperovitz
The
Political Institutions of the Good Society Philip Green
Conclusion:
Judging the Good Society Stephen L. Elkin