This paper is an exercise in conceptual clarification. Its purpose is to explore the contribution that constitutional economics can make to the theory of democracy. Constitutional economics as the economics of rules is concerned with the study of how the choice of rules in the social, economic...

The growth of the democratic welfare state has been accompanied by significant restrictions on individual liberty, raising doubts about the sustainability of the ideals of liberalism in democratic polities. The principal claim of this paper is that, adequately understood, liberalism and...