The democratic constitution: why Europeans should avoid American style constitutional judicial review

Understanding of the relationship between constitutionalism and democracy among legal and political philosophers reflects an idealised account of the US constitution and the nature of judicial review. This view is normatively and empirically flawed. The US constitution is built on pre-democratic assumptions and its counter-majoritarian checks and balances are largely regressive, benefitting privileged minorities over the underprivileged. By contrast, ‘actually existing democracy’, involving competing parties and majority rule, is constitutional in its process and effects, treating all with equal concern and respect, upholding rights and maintaining the rule of law. Judicial review undermines these beneficial qualities

Classical electoral competition under approval voting

We study a Downsian model of electoral competition with an arbitrary number of parties. The voting rule is approval voting. We assume that voters are strategic in the sense of the Leader Rule of Laslier (2009, Jnl. Th. Pol.). We show that if a Condorcet winner policy exists, then there exists an electoral competition equilibrium supporting this policy. Moreover, if the set of policies is one-dimensional and voters have single-peaked preferences, then it is the only electoral competition equilibrium