Consensus is Expensive

Proportional system spend more money than majoritarian ones.

The logic presented above is that in a system where many players must reach agreement, public spending will be higher. The two systems that I deal with here are majoritarian systems, as typically seen in presidential system and proportional system, typically seen in parliamentary systems.

Before we go into the gist of it all, let’s outline the problem at hand. Countries differ severely in public spending. Some countries, such as France and the Scandinavian countries, have quite high rates of public spending. Others, such as the USA , public spending is somewhat lower.

What may cause these different outcomes? Some may inject that the USA has has little appetite for any policy that can be labeled socialist. To take another example, Denmark may be some cosy country where the government enjoys spending money on their citizens for fun and games.

But perhaps there is third explanation to make sense of these two different outcomes.

Constitutions

Constitutions are the rules of the game for any country. They’re rarely changed and are therefore easily comparable. A constitution basically out-lies how elections work, limits on power and much more.