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Institutions in the Marketplace of Ideas

TL;DR: The New Institutional Economics (NIE) model as discussed by the authors is based on the free market for goods and services, but it does not take into account the transaction costs and institutions that populate and effectively regulate that market.
Abstract: If any area of constitutional law has been defined by a metaphor, the First Amendment is the area, and the "marketplace of ideas" is the metaphor. Ever since Justice Holmes invoked the concept in his Abrams dissent, academic and popular understandings of the First Amendment have embraced the notion that free speech, like the free market, creates a competitive environment in which the best ideas ultimately prevail. But as with the free market for goods and services, there are discontents who point to the market failures that make the marketplace metaphor aspirational at best, and inequitable at worst. Defenders of the free economic market have responded to these criticisms by developing a thicker understanding of how the market actually functions. Their most successful model is the New Institutional Economics (NIE), which incorporates and explains the transaction costs and institutions that populate and effectively regulate that market. The marketplace of ideas model, however, remains faithfully wedded to a neoclassical view of the market that depends on a perfectly costless and efficient exchange of ideas. It is thus vulnerable to the same criticisms economists answered decades ago, and it fails to take into account the rich view of market mechanisms and institutions they have developed since. In recent years, First Amendment scholars led by Frederick Schauer laid the groundwork for a solution by describing an "Institutional First Amendment" that would accord special treatment to certain institutions like schools and the press. But just as the marketplace of ideas fails to account for institutions, the Institutional First Amendment fails to account for the marketplace of ideas. As it turns out, the two theories are not only reconcilable, but complementary. This Article brings them together, using the New Institutional Economics to describe the "speech institutions" - such as schools and universities - that play the same cost-reducing role in the marketplace of ideas as other institutions do in the market for goods and services. For the same reason and to the same degree as economists defer to the private norms of market-enhancing institutions, so too should courts defer to the speech rules of marketplace-of-ideas-enhancing institutions. The Article then tests the descriptive and normative validity of this "New Institutional First Amendment," finding that it both explains and justifies much of the Court's recent school speech doctrine, including its recent ruling in Morse v. Frederick, and also justifies the special status of universities as speech institutions. By addressing the economic objections to the marketplace metaphor, the Article attempts to better describe, explain, and rehabilitate the marketplace of ideas.
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TL;DR: The relationship between economic ideas and policymaking in Africa over the last half century has been examined in this paper, where the focus of economists working on Africa has moved from the structuralist-developmentalist and neo-Marxist perspectives of the 1960s and 1970s, through a neoliberal phase of the 1980s and 1990s, to a more eclectic combination of neo-institutionalism, growth orientation, and welfarist interests in poverty and redistribution issues.
Abstract: This article looks at the relationship between economic ideas and policymaking in Africa over the last half century. It discusses the ways in which the focus of economists working on Africa has moved from the structuralist-developmentalist and neo-Marxist perspectives of the 1960s and 1970s, through a neoliberal phase of the 1980s and 1990s, to a more eclectic combination of neo-institutionalism, growth orientation, and welfarist interests in poverty and redistribution issues. These shifts in development thinking, while not unique to Africa, have not been the subject of much debate in Africa. The article argues that such a debate is long overdue, including an interrogation not only of the leverage of foreign interests, but also of the profession of economics itself and the implications of its material underpinnings and social construction on the integrity and credibility of its research.

32 citations

01 Jan 2014
TL;DR: In this article, the authors analyze the use of blogs by professional journalists in francophone Belgium and expose the reasons and logics of the incorporation and legitimization of blogs as professional tools inside the journalism sector.
Abstract: The present thesis analyses the use of blogs by professional journalists in francophone Belgium. It exposes the reasons and logics of the incorporation and legitimization of blogs as professional tools inside the journalism sector. The central question of this sociological research is the following : does journalistic blogging constitute a mere transposition of the journalistic work to an additional medium, or does it lead specific types of practices inside the field of journalism ? In this thesis, it appears that the main values of blogging (autonomy, transparency and participation) are also defended by journalists-bloggers. The thesis shows how these journalists-bloggers intend to combine the ideology of professional journalism with the values of the "network society".

27 citations

Dissertation
01 Jan 2013
TL;DR: The authors argue that the problem with hate speech is not the structure of the liability-ascription framework under which they operate, but rather the epistemic nature of the problem of proving that hate-speakers are in fact responsible for contributing, more than trivially, to the harmful patterns of identity-based inequality and disadvantage.
Abstract: The legal restriction of hate speech – i.e. speech that expresses contempt for people on the basis of their ethnicity, religion, or sexuality – is now commonplace in liberal legal systems outside the United States. This thesis takes up the question of whether restrictions on hate speech are generally justifiable. I begin by explaining why liberals should not dismiss anti-hate speech law from the outset as an intolerable violation of free speech. My analysis of the case for anti-hate speech law is thereafter framed by two main concerns. Firstly, I stress that if we are to impose legal restrictions on hate speech, we must establish not just that there are harmful outcomes associated with hate speech, but that those who engage in hate speech are responsible for those outcomes. Secondly, I argue that restrictions on hate speech should be assessed in two distinct classes. Inquiries into the justificatory bases of anti-hate speech law are typically conducted as if informative generalisations can be made about how the law should respond to anything that is properly called hate speech. Against this approach, I argue that while the liberal state can and should impose restrictions on directly harmful hate speech (in which hate speech is used to threaten, harass, and incite violence), restrictions on indirectly harmful hate speech – in which hate speech (allegedly) contributes to identity-based social hierarchies and their concomitant harms – are not justifiable. The problem with restrictions on indirectly harmful hate speech is not the structure of the liability-ascription framework under which they operate. Rather, I argue, the problem is epistemic: we cannot confidently judge that hate-speakers are in fact responsible for contributing, more than trivially, to the harmful patterns of identity-based inequality and disadvantage in light of which restrictions on indirectly harmful hate speech may be defended in principle.

25 citations

Dissertation
30 Jun 2017

19 citations


Cites background from "Institutions in the Marketplace of ..."

  • ...…all citizens and groups of citizens would have the same capacity to understand, filter and find well-grounded information, ignoring the existence of ideologically closed groups that tend to access only information that corroborates their perspective, and other sources of asymmetry (Blocher, 2008)....

    [...]

  • ...They mistakenly assume that all citizens and groups of citizens would have the same capacity to understand, filter and find well-grounded information, ignoring the existence of ideologically closed groups that tend to access only information that corroborates their perspective, and other sources of asymmetry (Blocher, 2008)....

    [...]

  • ...The marketplace of ideas assumes that in a society where citizens have unrestricted access to information, there would be a free competition of ideas, leading to the persistence of only the better ones (Blocher, 2008; Ingber, 1984)....

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