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The Ethical Voter

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 August 2014

R. E. Goodin  and
K. W. S. Roberts
R. E. Goodin
Affiliation:
University of Maryland
K. W. S. Roberts
Affiliation:
St. John's College, Oxford
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Extract

No rational egoist should bother voting because, as Skinner's Dr. Frazier notices, the probability of any one man casting the decisive ballot “is less than the chance he will be killed on the way to the polls.” No matter how deeply he cares about the electoral outcome, a man must realize that his vote is only one among very many. The larger the electorate, the smaller the probability of any one vote's changing the outcome, so in most modern polities the politically rational thing to do is to conserve on shoe leather.

Real-world voters, of course, do flock to the polls, which is usually explained in terms of a feeling of “civic duty.” The fact that men get some satisfaction from discharging their civic duty by voting might answer the question of why it is rational for them to go to the polls. Unfortunately, it leaves another—how do they vote once they get there? Presumably, they go ahead and vote according to the dictates of their egoistic interests.

Type
Research Article
Information
American Political Science Review , Volume 69 , Issue 3 , September 1975 , pp. 926 - 928
Copyright
Copyright © American Political Science Association 1975

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References

1 Skinner, B. F., Walden II (New York: Macmillan, 1948), p. 265 Google Scholar. See also Hegel, G. F. W., The Philosophy of Right, trans. Knox, T. M. (Chicago: Encyclopedia Brittanica, 1952), p. 104 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Barry, Brian, Political Argument (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1965), pp. 328–30Google Scholar and Sociologists, Economists and Democracy (London: Collier-Macmillan, 1970), pp. 19–23 Google Scholar; and Tullock, Gordon, Toward a Mathematics of Politics (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1967), chap. VII.Google Scholar

2 Downs, Anthony, An Economic Theory of Democracy (New York: Harper and Row, 1957), chap. 14Google Scholar. Almond, Gabriel A. and Verba, Sidney, The Civic Culture (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1963)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

3 Ferejohn, John A. and Fiorina, Morris P., “The Paradox of Not Voting: A Decision Theoretic Analysis,” American Political Science Review, 68 (06, 1974), 525–36CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

4 Hume, David, A Treatise of Human Nature (London: John Noon, 1739)Google Scholar, especially Book III, and An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals (London: T. Cadell, 1777)Google Scholar. Smith, Adam, The Theory of Moral Sentiments, 6th ed. (London: A. Strahan and T. Cadell, 1790)Google Scholar. Harsanyi, John C., “Cardinal Welfare, Individualistic Ethics and Interpersonal Comparisons of Utility,” Journal of Political Economy, 63 (08, 1955), 309–21CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

5 Banfield, Edward C. and Wilson, James Q., “Public Regardingness as a Value Premise in Voting Behavior,” American Political Science Review, 63 (12, 1964), 876–87Google Scholar. Another example might be Fenton, John H., The Catholic Vote (New Orleans: Hauser Press, 1960)Google Scholar; religious-group voting surely has both ethical and reference group aspects. Hare, R. M., The Language of Morals (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1952)Google Scholar argues that the essential characteristic of moral statements is that they are universalizable prescriptions.

6 Niebuhr, Reinhold, Moral Man and Immoral Society, A Study in Ethics and Politics (New York: Scribner's, 1932), pp. xi–xii Google Scholar, writes, “In every human group there is less reason to guide and check impulse, less capacity for self-transcendence, less ability to comprehend the needs of others and there-fore more unrestrained egoism than the individuals, who compose the group, reveal in their personal relationships.”

7 Hare, R. M., Freedom and Reason (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1963)Google Scholar.

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