Das Papier zeigt zunächst mögliche Gründe und Ursachen für die Errichtung und die Bewahrung unabhängiger Institutionen in demokratischen Rechtsstaaten auf. Danach werden formelle und behavioralistische Kriterien benannt, anhand derer der Grad der Unabhängigkeit auf einem Kontinuum zwischen...

In his excellent book Democracy and Knowledge: Innovation and Learning in Classical Athens, Josiah Ober argues that ancient Athenian democracy surmounted the dangers of political ignorance and made effective use of dispersed citizen knowledge to forge good public policy. He effectively...

Direct democracy is believed to lead to an allocation of resources that is closer to the median voter's preferences. If, however, the median voter suffers from bounded rationality, the allocation of public goods actually achieved should be affected. Based on recent empirical findings by economic...

Public choice theory takes citizens as rationally ignorant about political issues, because the costs of being informed greatly exceed the utility individuals derive from it. The costs of information (supply side) as well as the utility of information (demand side), however, can vary...