Economic Rights and the Policymaker's Decision Problem
Economic rights can be instantiated in a variety of ways. This paper investigates the problem with making economic rights into policy from one source: the political policymaker. By modeling the policymaker's decision problem we can identify particular decision flaws and possible correctives that might prompt economic rights instantiation through "enlightened self-interest." A complementary approach involves constitutionalizing economic rights with directive principles and enforceable law, which could work somewhat independently of the policymaker's preferences and/or beliefs. The last part of the paper looks at a sample of actual constitutions to see if government effort toward economic rights fulfillment is related with constitutionalization. The evidence here suggests a positive relationship: those countries with better economic rights provisions in their constitutions demonstrate greater economic rights effort.
|Date of creation:||Nov 2007|
|Date of revision:|
|Note:||Paper presented at the conference America, Human Rights and the World, Marquette University September 27-29, 2007. The idea for this paper was prompted by a one-day workshop held by the Economic Rights Group at the University of Connecticut entitled Instantiating Economic Rights. I thank ERG members for comments on this version, especially Shareen Hertel, Susan Randolph and Lyle Scruggs. I also thank David Forsythe, Richard Goldstone, Wiktor Osiatynski, and Richard Ashby Wilson for their comments.|
|Contact details of provider:|| Postal: University of Connecticut Thomas J. Dodd Research Center 405 Babbidge Road, Unit 1205 Storrs, CT 06269-1205|
Web page: http://www.humanrights.uconn.edu/
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