Against laissez-faire democracy

Abstract

This paper argues that the standard rationale for regulating markets also applies to democracy. Economists and philosophers commonly defend government intervention in markets on the grounds that markets predictably suffer from failures such as public goods problems, information asymmetries, principal–agent dilemmas, lack of competition, irrationality, and externalities. Democratic politics exhibits the same failures – often more severely – yet is typically assumed to be exempt from regulation. We challenge this asymmetry by showing that the justificatory structure for market regulation straightforwardly extends to democratic processes. We sketch a range of equality-preserving interventions – such as participation incentives, disclosure and promise-tracking mechanisms, transparent ballot design, and safeguards against catastrophic risks – that regulate democracy without abolishing it. Just as regulating markets is not the same as abolishing them, regulating democratic processes is not undemocratic. Recognizing this parity reframes debates about institutional design and opens a new research agenda in democratic theory.