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Constitutions and Economic Policy
(Torsten Persson and Guido Tabellini)
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"In a representative democracy, elected officials determine policy. The constitution spells out which offices have decision-making rights over policies, how access is gained to those offices through elections or political appointments and what are the procedures for setting policies. In turn, these rules determine how well voters can hold politicians accountable and which groups in society are more likely to see their interests adequately represented.
A common theme in this paper and in the related literature is that constitution design entails a tradeoff between accountability and representation (see also Bingham Powell, 2000; Prezworski, Stokes and Manin, 1999).
Constitutional features that clarify policy responsibilities and make it easy to replace an incumbent government strengthen accountability, but at the same time increase the political influence of the groups to whom policymakers are accountable."
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