American Economic Review
ISSN 0002-8282 (Print) | ISSN 1944-7981 (Online)
The Politician and the Judge: Accountability in Government
American Economic Review
vol. 94,
no. 4, September 2004
(pp. 1034–1054)
Abstract
We build a simple model to capture the major virtues and drawbacks of making public officials accountable (i. e., subjecting them to reelection): On the one hand, accountability allows the public to screen and discipline their officials; on the other, it may induce those officials to pander to public opinion and put too little weight on minority welfare. We study when decision-making powers should be allocated to the public directly (direct democracy), to accountable officials (called "politicians"), or to nonaccountable officials (called "judges").Citation
Maskin, Eric, and Jean Tirole. 2004. "The Politician and the Judge: Accountability in Government." American Economic Review, 94 (4): 1034–1054. DOI: 10.1257/0002828042002606JEL Classification
- D72 Political Processes: Rent-seeking, Lobbying, Elections, Legislatures, and Voting Behavior
- H11 Structure, Scope, and Performance of Government
- K40 Legal Procedure, the Legal System, and Illegal Behavior: General