The article proposes an enabling mechanism for the creation, adjustment and dissolution of governmental units, giving autonomy to each resident as in a direct democracy. Rather than focusing on a narrow model with restrictive and specialized assumptions, and subsequent solutions, as has been...

Auf dem Gipfel in Laeken im Dezember 2001 hat der Europäische Rat die Einrichtung eines Europäischen Konvents beschlossen, der sich mit Zukunftsfragen der Europäischen Union (EU) beschäftigen und Leitlinien für die nächste intergouvermentale Konferenz erarbeiten soll. Im Mittelpunkt der...

James Buchanan advocated the market mechanism for allocating resources because it is based on voluntary exchange. People engage in market transactions only when they believe they benefit from doing so. Buchanan depicted the political process the same way. People engage in collective activities...

Whenever the economic model of behavior is to be applied, the utility function has—at least somewhat—to be specified. Buchanan generally prefers to apply a rather narrow version. However, he acknowledges that it is hardly possible to explain actual behavior of individuals with such a...

This paper argues that sovereignty, as envisaged by Spinoza, is the logical foundation of constitutional economics. Constitutional constructs such as sovereignty weave an evolutionary dialectic between different organizational scales (the local, national, and global). This dialectic continues to...