Entrenchment carries both benefits and costs depending on context

Evidence

It also raises a broader set of questions about the phenomenon of political entrenchment. To start, the familiar set of commitment and stability benefits stemming from entrenchment in many different contexts, ranging from sovereign debt to environmental stewardship, complicates the common (if not consistent) public law intuition that impediments to political change should be suspect. Political entrenchment, whether formal or functional, has potential benefits as well as costs that must be assessed contextually and empirically. Public law’s longstanding embrace of entrenchment by way of constitutionalism is a rather significant illustration of this point. What is it that differentiates constitutional entrenchment, or the entrenchment of monetary policy through independent central banks, from the kinds of electoral and legislative entrenchment that public law regards as obviously problematic? Under what conditions should we view the entrenchment of politicians, parties, or policies as beneficial, benign, or pathological? — Daryl Levinson and Benjamin I. Sachs, Political Entrenchment and Public Law, 509

Categorization

• QUESTION: The distinction between legitimate entrenchment (constitutionalism, central banks) and pathological entrenchment is exactly the boundary question a theory of durable rationalizing ideology must explain.
• XREF: connects to: Formal and functional entrenchment do not differ in harm or benefit; Formal-versus-functional entrenchment does not split cleanly into bad and good — Daryl Levinson and Benjamin I. Sachs, Political Entrenchment and Public Law, 443; Entrenchment can serve public ends like precommitment and stability, not just self-serving power (+2 more)

Broader Connections

• Whether entrenchment is harmful or beneficial resists categorical judgments #expands (0.88) — Daryl Levinson and Benjamin I. Sachs, Political Entrenchment and Public Law, 443
• Entrenchment can serve public ends like precommitment and stability, not just self-serving power #exemplifies (0.85)
• Formal-versus-functional entrenchment does not split cleanly into bad and good #expands (0.82) — Daryl Levinson and Benjamin I. Sachs, Political Entrenchment and Public Law, 443
• Formal and functional entrenchment do not differ in harm or benefit #complicates (0.72)