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  4. March 2015
  5. Jon Elster's Securities against Misrule: Juries, Assemblies, Elections: A Review Essay

Journal of Economic Literature

ISSN 0022-0515 (Print) | ISSN 2328-8175 (Online)

Jon Elster's Securities against Misrule: Juries, Assemblies, Elections: A Review Essay

  • David Austen-Smith
Journal of Economic Literature
vol. 53, no. 1, March 2015
(pp. 65–78)
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Abstract

The standard economic approach to designing institutions for collective decision making recognizes individuals' strategically rational motivations for misrepresentation and asks how best, given an objective function, to design a set of incentives and constraints to internalize or negate such motivations. Securities Against Misrule offers, in the author's phrase, an "essay in persuasion" to the effect that such an approach is fundamentally misguided. Instead, Elster argues for a behavioral approach centered on designing institutions for good decision making, rather than good outcomes, by individuals whose actions are chronically subject to emotional, self-interested, and prejudicial distortions. ( JEL D02, D71, D72, D82)

Citation

Austen-Smith, David. 2015. "Jon Elster's Securities against Misrule: Juries, Assemblies, Elections: A Review Essay." Journal of Economic Literature, 53 (1): 65–78. DOI: 10.1257/jel.53.1.65

Additional Materials

JEL Classification

  • D02 Institutions: Design, Formation, Operations, and Impact
  • D71 Social Choice; Clubs; Committees; Associations
  • D72 Political Processes: Rent-seeking, Lobbying, Elections, Legislatures, and Voting Behavior
  • D82 Asymmetric and Private Information; Mechanism Design