Excerpted from The Independent Review (Summer 2001) by Roger D. Congleton.
My main complaint about Geoffrey Brennan and Alan Hamlin's new book is its title, which supplies a nice alliteration but seems a bit misleading. The title might lead the reader to expect a book about democratic intrigue at the turn of the twentieth century, when the high tide of democratic ideology gave rise to widespread suffrage movements and electoral reforms. Instead, what the reader finds is a very interesting rational-choice analysis of how constitutions should be designed if individuals can and do choose to follow normative rules-none of which seem, strictly speaking, to be intrinsically democratic. A helpful subtitle might have been "Implications of Norm-Following Behavior for Constitutional Design," which would indicate an issue on which the book does make a good deal of progress.
I have only very minor quarrels with the authors' basic argument, which on the whole seems to be very reasonable-and indeed many of their points have been mentioned, as they point out, in classic works on constitutional design.
Overall, the evidence suggests that ethical behavior in politics occurs, but it may be of more limited significance to voters than the Brennan-Hamlin analysis seems to imply. However, to their credit, Brennan and Hamlin expressly claim only that norm-following behavior does occur and may be relied on in some circumstances. This much all but the most diehard skeptics would surely acknowledge.
Even those who doubt this more modest but still significant claim, however, will benefit from considering the path-breaking analysis Brennan and Hamlin develop in this book.
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- Reviewed in the United States on August 15, 2001Format: Paperback
