Die normative Ko-Evolution von Marktwirtschaft und Demokratie (Normative Co-Evolution of the Market System and of Democracy)

German Abstract: Die deliberative Demokratie setzt die Marktwirtschaft als ein System des wirtschaftlichen Wettbewerbs voraus. Dies kann anhand des Popperschen Konzepts einer Offenen Gesellschaft mit Piecemeal Engineering nachgewiesen werden. Denn die Kohärenz einer Offenen Gesellschaft setzt bei endogen beeinflussten Präferenzen voraus, dass diese Präferenzen adaptiv sind. Ohne Marktwirtschaft würden adaptive Präferenzen jedoch zu gesellschaftlicher Erstarrung führen. – Andererseits setzt die Legitimierung der Marktwirtschaft auch die deliberative Demokratie voraus. Denn die interpersonellen Einflüsse auf Präferenzen und Werte bedürfen zu ihrer Legitimierung des Wettbwerbs dieser Einflüsse, den es nur im Rahmen einer demokratisch strukturierten Öffentlichkeit gibt. Die Kohärenz eines solchen Systems wird gestützt durch die Tatsache, dass man interpersonelle Präferenzeinflüsse oft in Analogie zu adaptiven Präferenzen sehen kann. Das gilt insbesondere für das universelle Phänomen der Nachahmung. English Abstract: The central concept of Karl Popper's idea of an Open Society is the one of "piecemeal engineering". Using the model of homo oeconomicus economics has provided a coherent justification of piecemeal engineering by means of cost-benefit analysis in a partial equilibrium setting (Kaldor-Hicks-Scitovsky criterion). But preferences are not fixed. Can we then still find a coherent justification of Karl Popper´s piecemeal engineering? The answer is yes, if preferences are "adaptive". But adaptivity of preferences implies a strong adherence to the status quo. For the generation of progress (for example, by legislation, by expanding infrastructure or by introducing a new product) society has to decentralize decision making, i.e. it has to rely on a market system and on freedom of speech and of research. On the other hand, preferences of citizens only can be the legitimate normative guidelines of private market oriented and of collective decisions if inter-personal impacts on preferences are part of a system of competing interpersonal "influences" of on preferences. But this requirement for legitimacy leads to "deliberative democracy" as a precondition of the market system. Perhaps the most important mode of inter-personal influence on preferences is imitation of others; for example imitation of parents by their children. It can be shown that the coherence requirement of piecemeal engineering under conditions of inter-personal influences on preferences is fulfilled, if these inter-personal influences exhibit the mode of imitation. There is an interesting formal symmetry between Eucken's ideal of perfect competition and Habermas' ideal of deliberative democracy. Both concepts are ideals, because they require the absence of inter-personal power relations. In Eucken's case it is the absence of pricing power of any supplier. Habermas considers the legitimate form of social decision making one in which consensus is achieved by means of the social discourse among equals (in German: "herrschaftsfreier Diskurs"). But consensus, and be it consensus as a result of discourse among equals, favors the forces of the status quo. Majority decisions frequently are needed to overcome the status quo. But majority decisions imply the use of power. In economics Eucken's ideal has to be complemented by Schumpeterian innovation which also implies the use of power, in this case the use of pricing power. Thus, in both systems, the political one and the economic one, society has to find the appropriate compromise between the ideal of freedom from power and the "progressive" forces which rely on the use of power.