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On the problem of scale: Spinozistic sovereignty as the logical foundation of constitutional economics

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journal contribution
posted on 2024-07-11, 09:35 authored by Ben Gussen
This paper argues that sovereignty, as envisaged by Spinoza, is the logical foundation of constitutional economics. Constitutional constructs such as sovereignty weave an evolutionary dialectic between different organizational 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 jurisdictions. The paper argues for more emphasis on constitutional orders in the spirit of Spinoza’s understanding of sovereignty. This entails preference for federal polities in which sovereignty is shared between different cities rather states where once capital cities dominate.

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PDF (Published version)

ISSN

1843-2298

Journal title

The Journal of Philosophical Economics

Volume

7

Issue

1 (Aut

Pagination

18 pp

Publisher

Rosetti Educational

Copyright statement

Copyright © 2013. This is an open access e-journal which means that all content is freely available without charge to the user or his/her institution. Users are allowed to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of the articles in this journal without asking prior permission from the publisher or the author provided acknowledgement is given to the original source of publication.

Language

eng