Abstract

Eichenberger’s ‚deregulation‘ concept is designed to make political competition as similar to market competition as possible. The aim is to replace the competition of encompassing programmes by the competition of issue specific policies. In my view this idea is mistaken. First, it is by no means clear how the proposed institutions might work, since no hint is given how issue specific policy supply and unspecific political demand are matched. Second, and more important, the conception is normatively unconvincing. It aims at dissolving the political decisions of a society into an aggregate of separate and mutually independent issue specific policy decisions - which would destroy the role politics has in a market society, namely, to provide market-complementary and not just market-analogous decisions.