Hayek on spontaneous order and constitutional design.

• Author: Boykin, Scott A.
• Position: Critical essay

Friedrich A. Hayek is well known for his use of the concept of spontaneous order to praise the market, reject socialism, and argue that moral traditions are the products of evolution. Less understood is the relationship between Hayek's idea of spontaneous order and his constitutionalism. His work here differs from the school of constitutional political economy, which proposes structures to limit governmental power chosen by self-interested persons (see, for example, Buchanan and Tullock 1962). In Hayek's view, the mechanics of the separation of powers will limit intervention in market and cultural competition only where the evolved opinion in a society regarding justice demands limited government. Deliberate constitutional design can place opinion in a position to curtail intervention and leave room for competitive social processes, but constitutional planning is no substitute for evolved beliefs that limit government's authority. Although constitutional design can facilitate and take advantage of spontaneous order, cultural evolution, which is a type of generation of spontaneous order, ultimately determines the constraints on public power.

Hayek's political thought rests on the concept of spontaneous order: unplanned social order generated by goal-directed individual action. He uses this concept to offer accounts of market competition and cultural evolution, and he argues that these self-organizing social phenomena are useful because they transmit more information than can be conveyed through conscious design. The concept of spontaneous order is also the basis of his liberal political theory, in which individual freedom is the central value. Hayek's work has received increased attention in recent years, but his constitutional writings have not received much critical notice, which is unfortunate because this element of his thought illuminates the relationship he establishes between spontaneous order and conscious design.

He outlines an ideal constitution that features a version of the separation of powers intended both to grant political primacy to evolved cultural rules and to limit the influence of groups that demand state interference with competitive social processes. For more than two centuries, liberal constitutionalists have championed the separation of powers as a means of constraining self-interested political activity that erodes personal freedom, and although Hayek is at one with this tradition on the worth of the separation of powers, he also contends that cultural rules that restrict public authority are requisite to preserving limited government. Because culture is, in Hayek's account, the product of spontaneous evolution, the rules that restrain power are fashioned by an invisible hand. The visible hand of constitutional design should place evolved rules in a position to govern egoistic political action, so Hayek's separation of powers subordinates particular interests to such rules. His scheme suggests that cultural rules must favor limited government because, if they do not, the separation of powers is insufficient to prevent intrusions on individual liberty. Liberalism and cultural evolution are thus closely associated in his political thought; his writings indicate that if cultural rules do not demand limited government, structural constraints on power will prove ineffectual.

The Market, Evolution, and Liberalism

Hayek argues that spontaneous order promotes cooperation without central direction by enabling individuals to coordinate their actions through the impersonal mechanisms of market prices and cultural rules. Because spontaneous order is the by-product of individuals' decisions, it is end independent; that is, it aims toward no collective goal or outcome. Instead, it generates abstract signals that provide information individuals can use in pursuing their aims. Such signals reduce the quantity of concrete information that individuals must collect to coordinate their plans with those of other persons. Whether in prices, which convey information concerning the demand for and supply of goods and services, or in evolved rules, which give rise to rational expectations regarding conduct, spontaneous order enables individuals to act on information they do not explicitly possess (Hayek 1973, 17-39). Because no one can know all the facts that determine prices or evolved rules, no one is in a position to plan economic activity or cultural change using as much information as is transmitted through market competition and cultural evolution. Public officials cannot determine the outcomes of economic activity without inhibiting the flow of information; a society's cultural traditions contain elements that cannot be articulated by anyone or productively tinkered with by government. Hayek rejects "constructivism," which is the assumption that "since man has himself created the institutions of society and civilization, he must also be able to alter them at will so as to satisfy his desires or wishes" (1978, 3). Neither a society's economy nor its culture can be effectively planned.

The spontaneous order of the market takes advantage of the "division of knowledge" in a society, coordinating the actions of persons who do not share the same information (Hayek 1948, 50). Most of the data used in the market is "knowledge of the particular circumstances of time and place" that requires decentralized planning for its efficient use (1948, 80). Market prices condense concrete information in an abstract, flexible form that can be rapidly transmitted. The price mechanism makes communication more efficient and puts resources to their most desired use; as a result, individuals are more productive than under any alternative economic arrangement (Hayek 1976, 115-20).

The natural selection of cultural rules is another instance of spontaneous order. Hayek contends that cultural evolution proceeds through a group selection process in which rules conducing to productivity spread at the expense of less-efficient practices. A group that observes better-adapted rules can support a larger population, so its practices displace other practices as it grows and as members of competing groups adopt these more effective behaviors. Culture is reproduced primarily through imitation because much of the information that the culture's rules contain is "tacit knowledge" not readily transmissible through overt instruction (Hayek 1979, 153-69). Cultural evolution tends toward increasing group size, and its zenith is the "extended order": a system of cooperative interaction that in its scope and complexity far exceeds the capabilities of conscious direction (Hayek 1988, 6).

Although the market process and cultural evolution are distinct processes, they are closely related. Hayek expects rules that support market practices to supersede those that underpin premarket arrangements because intergroup competition in the production of wealth drives evolution forward. Hence, cultural practices that promote the division of labor, contract, and private property should emerge through group competition. The emergence of private property and competitive markets brings about the establishment and gradual enlargement of the individual liberty that characterizes life in the extended order. Traditions that support personal freedom are thus the products of cultural evolution (Hayek 1988, 29-47).

The legal framework appropriate to the extended order conforms to the "rule of law," which Hayek describes as a "recta-legal doctrine or a political ideal" (1960, 206). The rule of law requires that laws take the form of general rules that are universally applied (1960, 208-9). General rules, according to Hayek, can establish a competitive arena in which individuals may pursue their private aims. Commands or policies that deviate from the form of general rules are necessary to determine the outcomes of economic activity, so socialist planning and market intervention intended to decide the results of competition will violate the rule of law (Hayek 1976, 123-29).

The rule of law is central to Hayek's liberalism. The state's power is limited when it can apply only general rules to individuals and has no authority to issue commands to private persons. Within the bounds of general rules, individuals can choose and pursue their private goals and possess a liberty limited only by others' equal freedom. To Hayek, liberal equality means equality before the law, not material equality, so liberalism recognizes no standard of justice determined by the pattern of income distribution. Where force and fraud are prohibited, property is protected, and contracts are enforced, liberal justice is served. Liberalism, then, demands limited government and thus restricts the power of popular majorities in a democracy (Hayek 1978, 132-43).

Interest-Group Politics and Spontaneous Order

Hayek sees interest-group politics as a threat to liberal government and the extended order. When a democratic institution is concerned with the political distribution of economic benefits to groups, group advantage becomes the basis of legislation, and the rule of law is likely to be violated. Political parties become coalitions of interest groups, and these alliances provide the legislative majorities by which such groups gain privileges that impose costs on the public (Hayek 1979, 5-19). As government interferes with market competition on behalf of favored groups, spontaneous order is destroyed. Intervention distorts prices and misallocates resources, and these problems precipitate further state direction to coordinate economic activity (1979, 89-96). Because economic competition among groups is the mechanism of cultural evolution, extensive state control of the economy can lead to the desuetude and disappearance of the evolved practices that gave rise to the extended order and that support its large population (1979, 170-73). The level of living and...