Real constitution-writing is bargaining among unequally affected parties, not impartial design.

Evidence

Thus far we have examined the case of a ”perfect veil ignorance’, behind which everybody is identical. This, in a sense, is equivalent to a normative model of constitutional writing. In reality, Constitutions are not written by social planners, and veil of ignorance have holes in them. In fact, in virtually every instance of Constitutional reform, a large amount of bargaining and conflict occurs at the Constitutional table. One simple way of capturing the complexity of the political economy of writing Constitutions is to generalize our model by assuming that not everybody derives the same (known) utility from the reform. — Philippe Aghion, Alberto Alesina, and Francesco Trebbi, Endogenous Political Institutions, 138

Categorization

• DEEPTHINKING: The ‘veil of ignorance has holes in it’ reframing cuts against the Rawlsian ideal: any actual constitutional moment is a contested bargain, so normative models misdescribe the object they claim to explain.
• XREF: Connects to Rawlsian veil-of-insignorance theory and to Buchanan/Tullock’s constitutional political economy.
• SEED: Essay angle: ‘The veil of ignorance has holes in it’ — what actual constitutional conventions reveal about how self-interested framers write rules for everyone.