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In Riker’s Footsteps

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2009

Iain McLean
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Abstract

Three important books have recently been published in the long shadow of WilliamH. Riker (1920–93). Norman Schofield declares himself a friend ofRiker; Gerry Mackie, an enemy; Anthony McGann, a mere acquaintance. However,Riker’s legacy gives shape to all three. The main elements of theRiker programme are explained in this article, and then how far each book underreview advances or undermines it is examined.

Type
Review Article
Information
British Journal of Political Science , Volume 39 , Issue 1 , January 2009 , pp. 195 - 210
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2008

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References

1 Bruce Bueno de Mesquita and Kenneth Shepsle, ‘William Harrison Riker, September 22, 1920–June 26, 1993’, Biographical Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences(see 〈http://newton.nap.edu/html/biomems/wriker.html〉).

2 Norman Schofield, Architects of Political Change: Constitutional Quandaries and Social Choice Theory (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006); Gerry Mackie, Democracy Defended (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003); Anthony McGann, The Logic of Democracy: Reconciling Equality, Deliberation, and Minority Protection (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2006).

3 ISI, Web of Knowledge (consulted 10 July 2007).

4 Albert Weale, ‘Social Choice Versus Populism? An Interpretation of Riker’s Political Theory’, British Journal of Political Science, 14 (1984), 369–85; Iain McLean, ‘William H. Riker and the Invention of Heresthetic(s)’, British Journal of Political Science, 32 (2002), 535–58.

5 Weale, ‘Social Choice Versus Populism?’, p. 370.

6 W. H. Riker, Liberalism against Populism (San Francisco: W. H. Freeman, 1982).

7 W. H. Riker and P. C. Ordeshook, An Introduction to Positive Political Theory (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1973).

8 C. A. Coulson, The Spirit of Applied Mathematics(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1953), p. 12, as quoted by R. Farquharson, Theory of Voting (Oxford: Blackwell, 1969), pp. 3–4.

9 W. H. Riker, The Theory of Political Coalitions (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1962).

10 ‘Heresthetics may be defined as ‘the art and science of political manipulation’. In 2002, it was unclear whether the word would catch on. Although not yet in the Oxford English Dictionary,it attracted ‘about 315’ hits in Google Scholar in July 2007.

11 Dennis C. Mueller, Public Choice III (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), pp. 582–3. The U, P, I, D notation was introduced by Amartya Sen in his Collective Choice and Social Welfare (Edinburgh: Oliver & Boyd, 1970). Mueller uses the label ‘unanimity’ for what is here called the ‘weak Pareto principle’.

12 Schofield’s contributions to these proofs are collected in his Social Choice and Democracy(Berlin: Springer, 1985).

13 G. Tullock: ‘Why So Much Stability?’ Public Choice, 37 (1981), 189–202.

14 K. T. Poole and H. Rosenthal, Congress: A Political-Economic History of Roll Call Voting(New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), p. viii. For a critique, see A. Spirling and I. McLean, ‘The Rights and Wrongs of Roll Calls’, Government and Opposition, 41 (2006), 561–8.

15 R. Brookhiser, Gentleman Revolutionary: Gouverneur Morris – The Rake Who Wrote the Constitution (New York: The Free Press, 2003). However, Brookhiser does not mention Riker.

16 Schofield, Architects, p. 16, n. 9.

17 Thomas Jefferson, draft as quoted in his Autobiography, in J. Appleby and T. Ball, eds, Jefferson: Political Writings (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), pp. 98–9. Congress adopted the whole passage, only changing the word ‘states’ to ‘colonies’.

18 Document inscribed, in Wedderburn’s hand, ‘Smiths Thoughts on the State of the Contest with America, February 1778’, in E. C. Mossner and I. S. Ross. ed., The Correspondence of Adam Smith (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987), pp. 380–5, quoted at pp. 382–3. This volume also includes the letters that prove Smith and Shelburne’s high regard for one another. See I. McLean, Adam Smith, Radical and Egalitarian: An Interpretation for the 21 stCentury(Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2006), pp. 100–13.

19 Schofield, Architects, pp. 77–80.

20 C. Van Doren, Benjamin Franklin(New York: Penguin,1991 [originally published in 1938]), p. 538; various editors, The Papers of Benjamin Franklin (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1959–), vol. 22, BF and others to Dumas, 9 December 1775; Dumas to BF and others, 30 April–9 May 1776; Report of Thomas Story to the Committee of Secret Correspondence, 1 October 1776.

21 I. McLean and A. Urken, ‘Did Jefferson or Madison Understand Condorcet’s Theory of Social Choice?’ Public Choice, 73 (1992), 445–57.

22 James Madison, The Federalist No.10, paragraph 17 (quoted by Schofield, Architects, p. 1).

23 Alexander Hamilton, The Federalist No. 68, paragraph 8. Hamilton would have been disappointed by Warren G. Harding and Richard M. Nixon.

24 Various editors, The Papers of Thomas Jefferson (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1950–); various editors, The Papers of James Madison (Chicago, later Virginia, University Presses, 1962–), for the period April to November 1787.

25 James Madison, ‘Vices of the Political System of the United States’, in J. Rakove, ed., James Madison: Writings (New York: Library of America, 1999), p. 79, last paragraph; I. McLean, ‘Before and after Publius’, in S. Kernell, ed., James Madison: The Theory and Practice of Republican Government (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2003), pp. 14–40.

26 Poole and Rosenthal, Congress, pp. 91–100.

27 Schofield, Architects, p. 168 (my emphasis).

28 Bryan was the Cowardly Lion of the Wizard of Oz. His last political appearance was in the ‘monkey trial’ of 1925, when he prosecuted the high-school teacher John Scopes for teaching evolution, contrary to a creationist Tennessee state law.

29 Saul Levmore, ‘Public Choice Defended’, University of Chicago Law Review, 72 (2005), 777–96; Keith Dowding, ‘Can Populism Be Defended? William Riker, Gerry Mackie and the Interpretation of Democracy’, Government and Opposition, 41 (2006), 327–46.

30 Levmore, ‘Public Choice Defended’, p. 778.

31 J. A. Schumpeter, Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy, 4th edn (London: Allen & Unwin, 1954), pp. 284–5.

32 Riker, Liberalism against Populism, p. 101, quoted by Mackie, Democracy Defended, p. 146.

33 P. Ray, ‘Independence of Irrelevant Alternatives’, Econometrica, 41 (1973), 987–93; I. McLean, ‘Independence of Irrelevant Alternatives before Arrow’, Mathematical Social Sciences, 30 (1995), 107–26.

34 Mackie, Democracy Defended, pp. 56–71, 123–57. Similar arguments are in Michael Dummett, Voting Procedures (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1984), pp. 52–6, and in numerous papers by Donald G. Saari, e.g., ‘The Borda Dictionary’, Social Choice and Welfare, 7 (1990), 279–317. For the Borda scheme in major league baseball’s Cy Young awards, see 〈http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cy_Young_Award〉, consulted 10 July 2007.

35 Mackie, Democracy Defended, p. 187. For a never-refuted argument against the VNM cardinalization escape route, see Sen, Collective Choice and Social Welfare, pp. 123–5 (‘Cardinality alone seems to kill no dragons, and our little St George must be sought elsewhere’, p. 125).

36 Sen, Collective Choice and Social Welfare, p. 72, Lemma 5*b.

37 Kenneth O. May, ‘A Set of Independent Necessary and Sufficient Conditions for Simple Majority Decision’, Econometrica, 20 (1952), 680–4. However, Charles Beitz, Political Equality (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1989), pp. 59–63, complains that the ‘conditions require a more satisfactory foundation’ than they get in social choice treatments. I think that Beitz’s criticism is unfair on Riker (cf. Liberalism against Populism, p. 59) and more so on Bruce Ackerman, Social Justice in the Liberal State(New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1980), pp. 277–85.

38 Mackie, Democracy Defended, pp. 155, 161, 410, 439.

39 M. A. Satterthwaite, ‘Strategy-proofness and Arrow’s Conditions’, Journal of Economic Theory, 10 (1975), 187–217.

40 Riker, Liberalism against Populism, chap. 9; W. H. Riker, The Art of Political Manipulation (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1986).

41 Levmore, ‘Public Choice Defended’, p. 789; Dowding, ‘Can Populism Be Defended?’ p. 342; Don Herzog, ‘Dragonslaying’, University of Chicago Law Review, 72 (2005), 757–76, at pp. 772–3 (‘Mackie’s response is so devastating, so mortifying, that I stopped breathing when I read it’ – luckily, not permanently).

42 US Constitution I.9.1 and IV.2.3.

43 Riker, Art of Political Manipulation, pp. 89–102.

44 Text at 〈http://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/wilmot.htm〉, accessed 22 August 2006.

45 A. Tabarrok and L. Spector, ‘Would the Borda Count Have Avoided the Civil War?’, Journal of Theoretical Politics, 11 (1999), 261–88.

46 Mackie, Democracy Defended, p. 267.

47 J. A. Jenkins and J. L. Morris, ‘Running to Lose? John C. Breckinridge and the presidential election of 1860’, Electoral Studies, 25 (2006), 306–28, especially Tables 3 and 4.

48 Sen, Collective Choice and Social Welfare, pp. 89–92.

49 McGann, Logic of Democracy, p. 1.

50 McGann, Logic of Democracy, p. 10.

51 McGann, Logic of Democracy, p. 12;May, ‘A Set of Iindependent Necessary and Sufficient Conditions for Simple Majority Decision’. For another important May extension, see R. E. Goodin and C. List, ‘A Conditional Defense of Plurality Rule: Generalizing May's Theorem in a Restricted Informational Environment’, American Journal of Political Science, 50 (2006), 940–9.

52 McGann, Logic of Democracy, p. 141.

53 McGann, Logic of Democracy, p. 147.

54 McGann, Logic of Democracy, pp. 91–2; cf. Kernell, ed., James Madison, chapters by Kernell and McLean.

55 Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations, V.i.g., quoting David Hume, History of England, iii, 30–1; McLean, Adam Smith, pp. 105–9.

56 John Uhr, ‘Testing Deliberative Democracy: The 1999 Australian Republic Referendum’, Government and Opposition, 35 (2000), 189–210; C. List and J. Dryzek, ‘Social Choice Theory and Deliberative Democracy: A Reconciliation’, British Journal of Political Science, 33 (2003), 1–28; C. List, R. Luskin, J. Fishkin and I. McLean, ‘Deliberation, Single-Peakedness, and the Possibility of Meaningful Democracy: Evidence from Deliberative Polls’ (unpublished; London School of Economics and Political Science, 2006, available at 〈http://personal.lse.ac.uk/list/PDF-files/DeliberationPaper.pdf〉).

57 A. Lijphart, The Politics of Accommodation (Berkeley: University of California Press 1968); Democracies: Patterns of Majoritarian and Consensus Government in 21 Countries(New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1984); Electoral Systems and Party Systems: A Study of 27 Democracies 1945–1990 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994).

58 George Tsebelis, Veto Players: HowPolitical Institutions Work (New York: Russell Sage, 2002).

59 Nicholas R. Miller, ‘Stability and Social Choice’, American Political Science Review, 77 (1983), 734–47.

60 Torsten Persson and Guido Tabellini, The Economic Effects of Constitutions (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2005); Torben Iversen and David Soskice, ‘Electoral Institutions and the Politics of Coalitions: Why Some Democracies Redistribute More Than Others’, American Political Science Review, 100 (2006), 165–81.

61 McGann, Logic of Democracy, p. 187, commenting on how Italy could meet the convergence criteria for the European Monetary System only after its electoral system change of 1994.

62 McLean, ‘Riker’, pp. 554–7.

63 Heresthetic political histories of nations other than the United States include Jack Nagel, ‘Social Choice in a Pluralitarian Democracy: The Politics of Market Liberalization in New Zealand’, British Journal of Political Science, 28 (1998), 223–65, and Iain McLean, Rational Choice and British Politics(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001).

64 Norman Schofield and Gary Miller, ‘William Jennings Bryan’s Revenge: The Transformation of the Republican and Democratic Party Coalitions in the United States’ (paper for ICER Conference, Turin, 2007), and ‘Activist Coalitions and Elections in the United States’ (unpublished, see 〈http://schofield.wustl.edu/28.AJPS32704.pdf〉).