Reconsidering Sustainable Development: Urbanization, Political-Economy, and Deliberative Democracy

Hayekian Political Economy and the Limits of Deliberative Democracy

Inspired by Habermasian critiques of liberalism, supporters of deliberative democracy seek an extension of social democratic institutions to further a reinvigorated communicative rationality against the ‘atomism’ of market processes. This paper offers a critique of deliberative democratic theory from a Hayekian perspective. For Hayek, the case against the social democratic state rests with the ...

Political Economy, Capitalism and Sustainable Development

After a critical review of conventional approaches to sustainability, this paper contrasts orthodox (neoclassical) economic theory with a political economy approach, arguing that such an approach focusing on the historically specific organizational form of production and the inherent characteristics of the capitalist mode of production is crucial for exploring the preconditions, the content and...

POLITICAL ECONOMY † Health and Democracy

In spite of the inexorable march of democracy around the globe, just how democratic institutions affect human well-being is open to debate. The evidence that democracy promotes prosperity is neither strong nor robust. Moreover, which aspects of policy making and human well-being are promoted by democracies is still a subject of debate. Even if correlations between democracy and outcome measures...

The Political Economy of Democracy and Tyranny

The Political Economy of Redistribution under Democracy∗

We ask what redistributions of income and assets are feasible in a democracy, given the initial assets and their distribution. The question is motivated by the possibility that if redistribution is insufficient for the poor or excessive for the rich, they may turn against democracy. In turn, if no redistribution simultaneously satisfies the poor and the wealthy, democracy cannot be sustained. H...