Risk-aversion in constitutional choice: Reply to Kyriacou

In his comment on my article on the possibility of discriminatory and non-consensual decsionmaking under Buchanan's "veil of uncertainty" (Müller 1998) Andreas Kyriacou proposes to take the players to be "quasi-risk averse" in order to secure fair and unanimous results at the constitutional level. As analytical tools of incorporating this premise into my model he not only suggests to assume that the individuals weigh losses higher than gains but also to take them as being rational maximiners. In this reply to his comment it is argued that both these points are inadequate to weaken my case against the veil's ability to guarantee unanimity and fairness of constitutional decisionmaking in view of a post-constitutional prisioners dilemma. © 1998 Kluwer Academic Publishers, Boston.