The Pragmatic and Democratic Approach to State as a Convention Between Persons

Abstract

The economics and sociology of conventions (EC/SC) distinguishes, to better understand their difference and interaction in social processes, the conventions of coordination between persons and institutions that aim at regulating the economy and the society from the center. In the case of the state, the chapter chooses as basic assumption the antecedence of conventions of coordination between persons over institutions of regulation. The term democracy comes directly from the Greek word demokratia, composed of two words demos and kratos. The Greek term demos at its origin means a territory inhabited by a community and, by extension, the people living in this territory. Conventions are the language of the demos and rules the language of the power. Anything can become language and make sense as soon as it is shared and understood by all members of a community. The so-called state is at the crossing of these two languages in that, for defining and implementing common goods, the members of the community should find a compromise between the two. One calls this compromise a convention of the state. One grasps the plurality of conventions of the state by looking at the state they refer: external state, absent state, and situated state. However, in ever-changing processes, one can never exclude new and unpredictable variants. New Public Management, political uses of performance indicators, etc. today lead to manipulate basic statistical concepts and tools. The channels from citizens to powers are cut, what one can call a-democracy.