Democracy and the Rule of Law (2003).pdf

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Democracy and the Rule of Law
The question posed in this book is why governments do or do not
act according to laws. The traditional answer of jurists has been
that law has an autonomous causal 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 law 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
muster: 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 from “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 Mar´a Maravall is Academic Director and Professor of Political
ı
Sociology at the Juan March Institute in Madrid. He is the author of
Dictatorship and Political Dissent
(1979),
The Transition to Democ-
racy in Spain
(1982), and
Regimes, Politics, and Markets
(1997).
Adam Przeworski is Carroll and Milton Petrie Professor of Politics
at New York University. He is coauthor of
Democracy and Develop-
ment
(Cambridge, 2000) and
Sustainable Democracy
(Cambridge,
1995) and coeditor of
Democracy, Accountability, and Representa-
tion
(Cambridge, 1999).
Together, Professors Maravall and Przeworski also coauthored
(with L. C. Bresser Pereira)
Economic Reforms of New Democracies
(Cambridge, 1993).
CAMBRIDGE STUDIES IN THE THEORY OF
DEMOCRACY
General Editor
ADAM PRZEWORSKI
New York University
OTHER BOOKS IN THE SERIES
John Elster, ed.,
Deliberative Democracy
Adam Przeworski, Susan Stokes, and Bernard Manin, eds.,
Democracy, Accountability, and Representation
Adam Przeworski et al.,
Democracy and Development:
Political Institutions and Well-Being in the
World, 1950–1990
Robert Barros,
Constitutionalism and Dictatorship:
Pinochet, the Junta, and the 1980 Constitution

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