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Democracy and the Rule of Law Edited by Jose Maria Maravall,
Adam Przeworski |
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The question posed in this book is why governments sometimes do
or do not act according to laws. The traditional answer of jurists has been
that law has an autonomous casual efficacy: law rules when actions follow
anterior norms; the relation between laws and actions is one of obedience,
obligation, or compliance. Contrary to this normative conception, the authors defend a
positive interpretation according to which the rule of laws results from the
strategic choices of relevant actors. Rule of law is just one possible
outcome in which political actors process their conflicts using whatever
resources they can master: only when these actors seek to resolve their
conflicts by recourse to law, does law rule. What distinguishes "rule of
law" as an institutional equilibrium fro "rule
by law" is the distribution of power. The former emerges when no one
group is strong enough to dominate the others and when the many use
institutions to promote their interests. Conflicts between rule of majority
and rule of law are simply conflicts in which actors use either votes or laws
as their instruments of power. Jose Maria Maravall is Academic Director
and Professor of Political Sociology at the Juan March Institute in Adam Przeworski is Carroll and Milton
Petrie Professor of Politics at Together, Professors Maravall
and Przeworski also coauthored (With L.C. Bresser Pereira) Economic Reforms of New Democracies (Cambridge,
1993). |
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