Contain the Wealthy and Patrol the Magistrates: Restoring Elite Accountability to Popular Government
- 1 February 2006
- journal article
- research article
- Published by Cambridge University Press (CUP) in American Political Science Review
- Vol. 100 (2), 147-163
- https://doi.org/10.1017/s0003055406062071
Abstract
Modern republics neglect to establish formal institutions that prevent wealthy citizens from exerting excessive political influence and they abandon extra-electoral techniques traditionally employed to keep office-holders accountable. Inspired by Guicciardini's and Machiavelli's reflections on the Roman, Venetian, and Florentine constitutions, this article highlights three forgotten practices that facilitate popular control ofbotheconomic and political elites: magistrate appointment procedures combining lottery and election, offices or assemblies excluding the wealthy from eligibility, and political trials enlisting the entire citizenry in prosecutions and appeals. I present a typology of regimes that evaluates the wealth containment potential of various magistrate selection methods, and propose a hypothetical reform supplying the U.S. Constitution with a “Tribunate” reminiscent of elite-accountability institutions in pre-eighteenth-century popular governments.Keywords
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