By: Chirag Kasbekar

Chirag Kasbekar — Sat, 09 Aug 2003 12:48:08 +0000

Michael Wohlgemuth seems to have moved to the Walter Eucken Institute. Also, the article I cite above doesn’t seem to be available online. But you can request Michael for a copy: http://www.eucken.de/mitarbeiter/wohlgemuth.htm Or you can request the Max-Planck Institute for a free copy by mail. They do that. The paper is listed here under 1999: http://www.mpiew-jena.mpg.de/english/research/index.html

By: Chirag Kasbekar

Chirag Kasbekar — Sat, 09 Aug 2003 09:28:45 +0000

Another interesting look at these connections is Michael Wohlgemuth's Hayekian look at Social Choice and democracy. Especially his "Democracy as a discovery procedure". He claims that democracy isn't just an aggregation of existing preferences -- a neoclassical/social choice conceit -- but is a Hayekian discovery procedure where opinions are formed. In fact I think Hayek himself recognised this to a significant degree: "Democracy is, above all, a process of forming opinion. Its chief advantage lies not in its method of selecting those who govern but in the fact that, because a great part of the population takes an active part in the formation of opinion, a correspondingly wide range of persons is available from which to select... It is in its dynamic, rather than in its static, aspects that the value of democracy proves itself... The ideal of democracy rests on the belief that the view which will direct government emerges from an independent and spontaneous process. It requires, therefore, the existence of a large sphere independent of majority control in which the opinions of the individuals are formed." (The Constitution of Liberty, pp.107-108) Another good place for such a Hayek-inspired process view of democracy is Gus diZerega's work: Persuasion, Power and Polity: A Theory of Democratic Self-Organization ...and other stuff

Comments on: Deliberative Democracy and Social Choice

By: Chirag Kasbekar

By: Chirag Kasbekar