Russell Hardin > Quotes

“The fundamentally important issue in the design of constitutions is to enable rather than hinder economic transitions that are not well understood in advance.”
― Russell Hardin, Liberalism, Constitutionalism, and Democracy

“Once we have a constitution and relevant legislative institutions in place, working out details may then be facilitated, although it need not be very democratic.”
― Russell Hardin, Liberalism, Constitutionalism, and Democracy

“The tension between enabling and constraining democracy is therefore the heart of democratic constitutionalism.”
― Russell Hardin, Liberalism, Constitutionalism, and Democracy

“We should qualify this observation to say that a constitution is more likely to last if it does not embody a misfit economic theory.”
― Russell Hardin, Liberalism, Constitutionalism, and Democracy

“Shock therapy has arguably created a large block of politicized people ready to vote for someone, perhaps a militarist, a quasifascist, or an old-style Communist, to undo the transitional order that has harmed them.”
― Russell Hardin, Liberalism, Constitutionalism, and Democracy

“Creating a constitution is itself primarily an act of coordination on one of many possible ways of ordering our lives together, not an act of cooperating in an exchange or prisoner’s dilemma.”
― Russell Hardin, Liberalism, Constitutionalism, and Democracy

“In the US case, the best constitution was one that left the Jeffersonian and Hamiltonian visions to be fought out in the economy rather than in the polity”
― Russell Hardin, Liberalism, Constitutionalism, and Democracy

“Tocqueville presciently claimed that the strength of the American government was to a large extent the result of its democratic incapacity to run the nation and the economy as coherently and effectively as a monarchical or autocratic government might run it.”
― Russell Hardin, Liberalism, Constitutionalism, and Democracy

“Agreement between those of unequal power is inherently suspect. (page 102)”
― Russell Hardin, Trust and Trustworthiness

“A commonplace argument in contemporary writing on trust is that we would all be better off if we were all more trusting, and therefore we should all trust more […] Typically, however, the crucial variable is the trustworthiness of those who are to be trusted or relied upon. […] It is not trust per se, but trusting the right people that makes for successful relationships and happiness. [...] To trust the untrustworthy can be disastrous.

“If we wish to understand the role of trust in society […], we must get beyond the flaccid – and often wrong – assumption that trust is simply good. This supposition must be heavily qualified, because trusting the malevolent or the radically incompetent can be foolish and often even grossly harmful.”
― Russell Hardin, Trust