محسن رنانی - دانشیار گروه اقتصاد، دانشگاه اصفهان

This article firstly investigates the freedom concept from various approaches and describes the differences of freedom types. Then it puts its focus on the concept of ‘democratic freedom’ and distinguishes it from other types of freedom. In this article, democratic freedom is defined as the elimination of any kind of restriction and obligation, which can be political, social, economic etc. and formal or informal, originated from different social institutions imposed by the ruling power (governments, kings, parliaments and other powerful groups). One can use the expression ‘freedom for …’ to indicate the elimination of these restrictions. Then using six assumptions concerning the social actors’ behavior, this paper tries to test its central hypothesis. This central hypothesis is: restrictions and rules are passed (or democratic freedoms are restricted) so far as the real net social benefits are maximized in a society satisfying these six assumptions. Next, the article makes an attempt to develop an analytical framework for the theoretical confirmation of the hypothesis. To this end, the article introduces the social cost and benefits of the democratic freedoms. After that, considering the net benefits of freedom, the optimum point of the democratic freedom expansion will be presented. In the next step, the article analyses the freedom relations with the development and shows that the more the society develops the less will be the costs of freedom. Finally, the article shows that if there are expanded relations among the political systems with democratic freedoms, so that information flows through them freely, it is expected that there will be a convergence among ‘belief-values’ packages of the societies in long run, and all of them will move towards the middle society condition.

کلیدواژه‌ها: آزادی مثبت, آزادی منفی, آزادی رمانتیک, آزادی مترقی, آزادی طبیعی, آزادی دموکراتیک, منحنی ترجیحات آزادی, حد بهینة آزادی