New Books In Economics

Oligarchy is a threat to the American republic. When too much economic and political power is concentrated in too few hands, we risk losing the “republican form of government” the Constitution requires. Today, courts enforce the constitution as if it had almost nothing to say about this threat. The Anti-Oligarchy Constitution: Reconstructing the Economic Foundations of American Democracy (Harvard University Press, 2022) is a bold call to reclaim an American tradition that argues the constitution imposes a duty on government to fight oligarchy and ensure broadly shared wealth. In this revolutionary retelling of constitutional history, Dr. Joseph Fishkin and Dr. William Forbath show that a commitment to prevent oligarchy once stood at the center of a robust tradition in American political and constitutional thought. Dr. Fishkin and Dr. Forbath argue that “The constitutional order does rest and depend on a political-economic order. That political-economic order does not maintain itself. It requires action (as we