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Constitutional quandaries in Europe

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Abstract

Most of the constitutional political economy literature has followed Buchanan and Tullock by remaining inherently normative, but a small literature has appeared that examines the properties of constitutions by considering the motives of the people who actually write the constitution. This literature is in the positive public choice tradition, in that it assumes that the people who write a constitution are interested in advancing their interests and not those of someone else. This note discusses the need for and nature of a constitution that would advance the interests of all citizens, and then the procedures that would be necessary to create and adopt such a constitution.

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Mueller, D.C. Constitutional quandaries in Europe. Constit Polit Econ 7, 293–302 (1996). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00119269

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