Project Details
Projekt
ECC - Economics of Compliance with Constitutions
Applicant
Professor Dr. Stefan Voigt
Subject Area
Economic Policy, Applied Economics
Public Law
Political Science
Public Law
Political Science
Term
from 2017 to 2023
Project identifier
Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 381589259
The project's main objective is to deepen our understanding of the discrepancies between de jure constitutional rules and de facto constitutional reality. By now, the significance of various constitutional rules for both policy decisions and economic outcomes is well established. While it is agreed that their de facto implementation is more important than the mere de jure wording of constitutional provisions, there is no systematic analysis of the causes and consequences of the gap between the two. The ECC project fills this lacuna by offering a comprehensive economic account of the compliance with constitutions problem. We propose to conceptualize the de jure-de facto constitutional gap first, which is a precondition for developing a theory to explain its causes and consequences as well as for measuring it. Based on a number of preliminary conjectures (the gap will not only be determined by the content of the constitutional rules but also by country characteristics such as culture, politics and socio-economic conditions), we will develop a comprehensive theory that also describes likely effects of a constitutional gap. The resulting hypotheses will then be tested relying on two complementary empirical approaches - econometric methods applied to observational data for a global sample of countries, as well as experimental methods that are used to study individual behavior under precisely controlled conditions. Understanding the causes and consequences of de jure-de facto constitutional gaps is of significant policy relevance, as it helps to design better legal institutions and creates awareness of the limits of what constitutional reform can achieve. The Polish-German cooperation on this project allows not only to combine the expertise and potential of two important centers of research in constitutional economics, but it also provides a unique opportunity to conduct experiments in Germany, Poland, and Egypt (where the University of Cairo is a partner of the University of Hamburg) and compare the perceptions of constitutions and constitutional compliance across countries with substantial differences in many characteristics ranging from income levels to historical legacies and political regime experience.
DFG Programme
Research Grants
International Connection
Poland
