A liberal state is a representative democracy constrained by the
rule of law. Richard Posner argues for a conception of the liberal
state based on pragmatic theories of government. He views the
actions of elected officials as guided by interests rather than by
reason and the decisions of judges by discretion rather than by
rules. He emphasizes the institutional and material, rather than
moral and deliberative, factors in democratic decision making.
Posner argues that democracy is best viewed as a competition
for power by means of regular elections. Citizens should not be
expected to play a significant role in making complex public policy
regarding, say, taxes or missile defense. The great advantage of
democracy is not that it is the rule of the wise or the good but
that it enables stability and orderly succession in government and
limits the tendency of rulers to enrich or empower themselves to
the disadvantage of the public. Posner's theory steers between
political theorists' concept of deliberative democracy on the left
and economists' public-choice theory on the right. It makes a
significant contribution to the theory of democracy--and to the
theory of law as well, by showing that the principles that inform
Schumpeterian democratic theory also inform the theory and practice
of adjudication. The book argues for law and democracy as twin
halves of a pragmatic theory of American government.
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