The Political Economy Of The Dilemma Of Welfare Democracy

By historically analyzing the formation, institutional arrangement and extending of welfare democracies in the following thesis, two relevant theories, School of Constitutional Economics with James Buchanan as representative and School of Freiburg with claim of Ordnungspolitik, are deduced in perspective of taxation.Originated from two different modes of welfare democracy and academic conventions, each of the two schools show huge difference from the other. For School of Constitutional Economics with its presupposition of Hobbes' contractualism and with its conclusion of no constitution without economic activities, economic approaches are emphasized with institutions from politics and legal. On the other hand, in opinion of scholars of Freiburg School who inherit Germany philosophy tradition of social organism, political and economic activities in society are indivisible. On the basis of legal positivism, the Freiburg takes economy constitution as absolute determination to action of government. School of Freiburg, while holding classic economic conception, transforms modes of economics to legal discourse normatively.At the same time, the two schools reinforce each other conspicuously and share similar views about institutional cause of dilemma for welfare democracies since World War II. The two schools, centered around "Meta-rules" and "Ordnungspolitik" respectively, both prone to rectify the expending and the failure of parliamentary democracy's restriction to government by confining economic action of government. And both of them stress constraint of cross-time constitution to government and rectification of constitutional government to democracy. In general, the spirit of the two schools are of equal importance with Hayek's "Meta-legal Doctrine". For this reason, my thesis aims to explore the similarities and utilities among the above schools through classical methodology.Combination of economics with law science is the common method of the two schools, which deserves special attention in my research.