Libertärer Paternalismus

Libertarian paternalism justifies government intervention in private transactions with the irrationality of choices made by the citizens involved. The legitimacy of these interventions is based on the condition that the citizen's freedom of choice is to be respected. The purpose of the concept of choice architecture, developed by Richard H. Thaler and Cass Sunstein, is to help citizens to reveal their individual preferences as optimal as possible and at the same time to promote desirable developments in the entire society. Based on a description of the theoretical foundations and the conceptual weaknesses of this idea, Robert Neumann attempts to justify Libertarian Paternalism from the perspective of constitutional economics. The suggestion he derives from this, which is to design the instruments of choice architecture exclusively via a preference based approach, is illustrated with an empirical study of preferences regarding German family policy.