An economic model for constitutional designs: from nation-states to an 'Olympic world system'

An economic model for constitutional designs: from nation-states to an 'Olympic world system'

Heartened by Aaron Director’s formation of a law-and-economics cluster at the University of Chicago, this paper proposes a new cluster that shares a post nation-state, city-centered, vision for constitutional organisation. To this end, the paper introduces an economic model to illustrate the role of polycentricity in the stability and prosperity of polities. The model is inspired by Tinbergen’s gravity model of international trade, and two-dimensional lattice models used in theoretical physics. The model suggests that constitutional constructs weave an evolutionary dialectic between different organisational scales (the local, national, and global). This dialectic continues to wreak havoc at the local scale, and can be interrupted only through explicit constitutional constraints on the size of ‘jurisdictional footprints’. Polycentricity is interpreted in the spirit of (non-contiguous) charter cities, and through the scholarship of Baruch Spinoza’s constitutional orders, as exemplified by the Dutch Republic (1581-1795). This rendition of sovereignty is imperative as much for countries facing the strife of civil war (including Libya, Yemen, Syria, Iraq, and the Ukraine) as it is for maturing economies. In a globalizing world that is more and more imbued with nation-state morbidity, there is a pressing need for a city-centric, ‘Olympic world system’. A Chicago cluster bringing together scholars such as Gerald Frug, Paul Romer, Benjamin Barber, Yishai Blank, and Saskia Sassen, could see this vision come to fruition.

Part of author's Short ADOSP for 2016. Open access publisher.