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CHAPTER 9: MAJORITARIANISM Democracy is nearly synonymous in popular usage with majority rule, with the idea that a democratic government should carry out the majority’s will. However, the American Founders did not envision their new nation as a democracy in this sense. Rather, they deliberately designed the federal government to be insulated from popular opinion. If we take the idea of checks and balances and the separation of powers among the three branches of government seriously, those branches must have roughly the same power to check and balance each other. If they do, then the original design of the US government under the Constitution was one-sixth democratic. Let us explain. Members of the judiciary are appointed by the president and confirmed by Congress, so there is no direct mechanism for popular opinion to influence them. Supreme Court justices are appointed for life, further insulating them from democratic pressures. State legislatures originally chose senators, so senators represented the interests of their states, were not subject to popular approval, and were not accountable to popular opinion. The Seventeenth Amendment, which specifies MAJORITARIANISM 61
the direct election of senators, changed this system when it was ratified in 1913. Originally, only the members of the House of Representatives were chosen by popular vote. Representatives were to represent the interests of the people and senators were to represent the interests of state governments; however, with popular voting for both senators and representatives, the two groups now represent the same constituencies. The House of Representatives was the only part of the government designed to respond to the will of the people, however, and as half of one of the three branches, the Founders thus originally designed our government to be one-sixth democratic. The electoral college chooses the president, and the Constitution has never specified how electors are chosen. The most common method in 1800 was for the state legislature to choose a state’s electors. 1 The idea was that the electors would be better informed about the candidates than members of the general public would be, so the electors would nominate two candidates, at least one of whom had to be from a state other than the elector’s. The Founders thought that, in general, this method of election would result in no candidate receiving an electoral majority, in which case the five top votegetters would have their names forwarded to the House of Representatives, and the House would choose the president. 2 In other words, the electoral college would serve as a search committee to forward names to the House of Representatives, where the president would be selected. This process would insulate presidential selection from democratic pressures and insulate the president from the pressures of popular opinion. The system did not work as 62 LIBERALISM AND CRONYISM
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LIBERALISM AND CRONYISM Two Rival P
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LIBERALISM AND CRONYISM: TWO RIVAL
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CONTENTS Introduction 1 Chapter 1:
Page 10 and 11:
INTRODUCTION People often see polit
Page 12 and 13:
who have the power to make decision
Page 14 and 15:
CHAPTER 1: LAYING A FOUNDATION Befo
Page 16 and 17:
hijacking of the term to describe a
Page 18 and 19: esources can be taken from some for
Page 20 and 21: suffers from “market failure,”
Page 22: is a group of cronies in a dictator
Page 25 and 26: ecause it permits voluntary exchang
Page 27 and 28: people’s economic well-being. The
Page 29 and 30: consumer demands. Examples of rent-
Page 31 and 32: the Politburo and the needs of conn
Page 33 and 34: consider the benefits and costs of
Page 35 and 36: upon state privilege and disproport
Page 37 and 38: their loyalty to the socialist stat
Page 39 and 40: cronyism from gripping every area i
Page 41 and 42: communism are well documented and w
Page 43 and 44: Accountability was embodied by refo
Page 45 and 46: despite comprising only 3 percent o
Page 48 and 49: CHAPTER 5: FASCISM Fascism, the pol
Page 50 and 51: use the sword of the Nazi state to
Page 52 and 53: planners created a back door for in
Page 54 and 55: CHAPTER 6: CORPORATISM Corporatism
Page 56 and 57: puts men and their possibilities in
Page 58: that this form of guided capitalism
Page 61 and 62: therefore provide sufficient benefi
Page 64 and 65: CHAPTER 8: PROGRESSIVISM Progressiv
Page 66 and 67: people who argue for limited govern
Page 68: Security, Medicare, and Medicaid do
Page 73 and 74: argue for narrow individual interes
Page 75 and 76: their roots to diverse sources of i
Page 77 and 78: promises to assume a company’s de
Page 79 and 80: enefits for his former venture capi
Page 81 and 82: prices of firms within the textile
Page 83 and 84: ment the power to make decisions an
Page 85 and 86: of social justice, cronyism has an
Page 87 and 88: for women in the twentieth century,
Page 89 and 90: ecause it advocates granting these
Page 91 and 92: should pay the same as comparable b
Page 93 and 94: way, the US government replaced the
Page 95 and 96: an individual, social justice advoc
Page 98 and 99: CHAPTER 12: CRONY CAPITALISM AND DE
Page 100 and 101: subsidies, political connections di
Page 102 and 103: CHAPTER 13: INDUSTRIAL POLICY The t
Page 104 and 105: “cottage industries” that clust
Page 106 and 107: of complex systems. He applied this
Page 108 and 109: South Korean industrial policy gave
Page 110: The degree to which Japan’s and S
Page 113 and 114: to get involved in lobbying to prot
Page 116 and 117: CHAPTER 15: LIBERALISM VERSUS CRONY
Page 118: that power will arise with another
Page 121 and 122:
with power support each other to ma
Page 123 and 124:
an incentive to cooperate for the b
Page 125:
environmental movement often advoca
Page 129 and 130:
6. Ludwig von Mises, Human Action,
Page 131 and 132:
12. James Heinzen, “The Art of th
Page 133 and 134:
CHAPTER 5: FASCISM 1. Peter Temin,
Page 135 and 136:
CHAPTER 8: PROGRESSIVISM 1. Terry L
Page 137 and 138:
16. Bruce Yandle, “Bootleggers an
Page 139 and 140:
3. Eamonn Fingleton, “Japan’s I
Page 142 and 143:
FURTHER READING Acemoglu, Daron and
Page 144 and 145:
ABOUT THE AUTHORS Randall G. Holcom
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