Constitutional Democracy as a Two-Stage Game

TL;DRAbstract

Constitutional democracy can be modeled as a complex game involving two general stages of political decision making. One stage (sometimes labeled the constitutional phase or higher track) is a cooperative game in which moral (i.e., rational and fair-minded) players jointly agree to promote their common good by unanimously accepting a (written or unwritten) constitutional code. The code typically sets out fundamental political institutions (including legislative procedures, modes of election and appointment, amendment processes, and the like), delineates a system of checks and balances (though not necessarily one that undergirds an American-style separation of powers), and lists some basic rights of the people. Unanimous consent to some such constitution is effectively guaranteed through suitable definition of what it means to be a moral agent. For example, it might be supposed that, for this higher track of politics, any moral agent is an expected utility maximizer who imagines himself

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