THE CRITIQUE OF LIBERTARIAN CRITICISM OF DEMOCRACY: CAPLAN AND BRENNAN CASES
DEMOKRASİNİN LİBERTERYEN ELEŞTİRİSİNİN ELEŞTİRİSİ:CAPLAN VE BRENNAN ÖRNEĞİ

Author : Buğra KALKAN
Number of pages : 166-176

Abstract

Classical liberals, such as Locke, Tocqueville, and Mill, have developed arguments to justify constitutional democracy and defended the spreading out of the suffrage. Classical liberals have defended the democratic developments against its critics in difficult times. However, with the development of public choice theory, some philosophers started to criticize the basic assumptions of democracy very harshly in the liberal tradition. The problems such as the gap between the democratic policies and the popular consent and the wide-spread political ignorance of the voters are frequently given as examples of the democratic failure by public choice theorists. Caplan and Brennan, public choice libertarians, want to restrict political rights of the incompetent voters through establishing a kind of aristocratic political regime where the informed voters only have the right to political rights. Therefore, they want to break the link between political rights and the civil rights in the liberal tradition, and thus, offer a radical proposal. In this article, the reasons for this radical proposal in liberal tradition are examined, and the assumptions of Caplan and Brennan are criticized.

Keywords

democracy, public choice, Bryan Caplan, Jason Brennan, constitutional development

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