LEVIATHAN AT BAY: CONSTITUTIONAL VERSUS POLITICAL CONTROLS ON GOVERNMENT

A dependence on the people is, no doubt, the primary control on government; but experience has taught mankind the necessity of auxiliary precautions. - James Madison, Federalist No. 51 I. INTRODUCTION Citizens possess two main methods of controlling politicians, elections and constitutional constraints. The British system of parliamentary supremacy and America's written constitution with judicial review by the Supreme Court reflect the contrasting approaches. Political theorists continue to debate the relative effectiveness of constitutional and electoral controls on politicians. These controls seemingly are substitutes: if elections effectively control politicians, constitutional constraints become redundant and can only lower the effectiveness of government. Public choice theory separately examines elections and constitutions. An extensive literature beginning with Barro [1973] analyzes electoral controls, but has not considered constitutional controls. Constitutional political economy examines various constraints on politicians (Buchanan [1987], Brennan and Buchanan [1980]), yet assumes elections insufficiently control politicians. Recent studies of term limits (i.e., Dick and Lott [1993]) represent one effort to analyze constitutional and electoral controls together. I integrate constitutional limits on government into a model of electoral control of politicians. My model features two types of politicians, knaves who abuse discretionary powers at their disposal, and angels who never misuse power. Citizens delegate a variable amount of discretionary power to government, which provides benefits if properly employed but lowers welfare if abused. The interaction between constitutional limits and elections is complicated; constraints complement electoral controls based on politician payoffs (selection and incentive effects) while the screening and sorting effects substitute for constraints. I proceed in this paper as follows. Section II describes the citizen's constitutional delegation of authority to government and incorporates electoral screening of candidates. Optimal delegation of power increases with the effectiveness of screening, but unless screening is perfect, constitutional limits help keep Leviathan at bay. Section III endogenizes the candidate pool and examines the selection effect constitutional controls. The composition of the candidate pool depends on delegation to government, which has implications for the propensity of politicians to pursue their personal self-interest. While constitutional political economy relies heavily on the threat from knavish politicians, many political observers contend that most politicians sincerely pursue the public interest as they perceive it. I show that politicians' observed honesty does not invalidate the argument for chains. Section IV considers the ability of repeated elections to sort knaves out of office. The sorting effect increases optimal delegation of power to government, but constraints can still play a useful role if knaves try for office and electoral review is not continuous. Section V allows knaves to act opportunistically and considers the incentive effect of retrospective voting and post-political incentives. Constitutional constraints complement electoral incentives by limiting opportunistic knaves' gain from shirking. The final section concludes. II. CONSTITUTIONAL CHOICE IN A MODEL OF ANGELS AND KNAVES I adopt a principal-agent view of government. A representative citizen selects an agent to exercise the powers of government on her behalf. The representative citizen framework abstracts from differences amongst the population about the actions the agent should undertake. The control of politicians becomes difficult in the absence of a "common interest," both positively and normatively. Consequently, models of electoral control typically employ this assumption.(1) The agency model assumes a conflict of interest between the principal and agent. …