Open judiciaries seem to be agent-driven and a lot more visible than markets, though; if the American Supreme Court turns up a result you don’t like, you have a record of the way its members voted and can feel free to badmouth (say) Justice Kennedy for obviously misunderstanding the problem. In principle you can trace that all the way back to the local court level. In line with this, most of the criticism of the courts that I’ve seen takes the form of accusations of arbitrary rulings or abuses of power, both of which seem highly personal.
I think this sort of thing might break down as governmental institutions get larger than Dunbar’s Number, though, even if they remain nominally open. The criticism of legislatures I’ve seen is much more akin to the criticism of markets, treating them as amorphous masses with unclear motivations, although this is muddled somewhat by color politics—and the bureaucracy’s definitely treated like a market.
Well, there are all those lawyer jokes.
Open judiciaries seem to be agent-driven and a lot more visible than markets, though; if the American Supreme Court turns up a result you don’t like, you have a record of the way its members voted and can feel free to badmouth (say) Justice Kennedy for obviously misunderstanding the problem. In principle you can trace that all the way back to the local court level. In line with this, most of the criticism of the courts that I’ve seen takes the form of accusations of arbitrary rulings or abuses of power, both of which seem highly personal.
I think this sort of thing might break down as governmental institutions get larger than Dunbar’s Number, though, even if they remain nominally open. The criticism of legislatures I’ve seen is much more akin to the criticism of markets, treating them as amorphous masses with unclear motivations, although this is muddled somewhat by color politics—and the bureaucracy’s definitely treated like a market.