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On the Apparent Paradox of Participation: A New Proposal

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 August 2014

Gerald S. Strom
Gerald S. Strom*
Affiliation:
University of Illinoisat Chicago Circle
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Extract

In his Economic Theory of Democracy, Anthony Downs reached the conclusion that voting is usually an irrational act. Given that voting is costly in time and effort involved in getting to the polls and making a decision and given that the probability any one voter can affect the outcome diminishes very rapidly as the number of voters increases, it appears that a rational, utility-maximizing citizen will most probably abstain. Only if the citizen perceives a phenomenally large difference between (or among) the candidates or if the number of voters is small will he go to the polls.

Empirically, however, we know that substantially more than half of all eligible voters go to the polls in American presidential elections where the probability of any one voter's affecting the outcome is smaller than in any other election. If Downs is correct, at least half of the American electorate is irrational. But of what validity is a rational choice theory which characterizes most individuals as irrational? For this reason, theorists have attempted to modify Downs's theory so as to allow it to better explain why some rational citizens vote while others abstain.

Type
Research Article
Information
American Political Science Review , Volume 69 , Issue 3 , September 1975 , pp. 908 - 913
Copyright
Copyright © American Political Science Association 1975

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References

1 Downs, Anthony, An Economic Theory of Democracy (New York: Harper & Row, 1957), p. 274 Google Scholar.

2 Riker, William H. and Ordeshook, Peter C., “A Theory of the Calculus of Voting,” American Political Science Review, 62 (03, 1968), 25–42 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also Riker, William H. and Ordeshook, Peter C., An Introduction to Positive Political Theory (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1973), chap. 3Google 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), 525–536 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

4 Riker, and Ordeshook, , “Calculus,” p. 25 Google Scholar.

5 Technically the condition Ri > 0 is a necessary but not a sufficient condition. For example, if for individual i, Ri is positive he still may not vote if some alternative activity to voting gave him greater utility. Ri > 0 is sufficient only when it is assumed that the maximum utility of all alternatives to voting is 0. Inasmuch as Ri > 0 is a nice shorthand notation such an assumption is made in this paper.

6 Tullock, Gordon, Toward a Mathematics of Politics (Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 1967), p. 110 Google Scholar.

7 Riker, and Ordeshook, , “Calculus,” pp. 27–28 Google Scholar.

8 Ibid., p. 28.

9 This table is taken from Barry, Brian, Sociologists, Economists, and Democracy, Themes and Issues in Modern Sociology (London: Collier-Macmillan, 1970), p. 17 Google Scholar.

10 Ibid., p. 16.

11 Ferejohn and Fiorina, pp. 527–528.

12 Ibid., p. 528.

13 Ibid.

14 Very technically this is untrue because the Ferejohn-Fiorina model has no probabilities in it whatsoever. Their model without probabilities, however, is equivalent to an equiprobable model.

15 A somewhat similar situation is the choice between gambling (seeking risk) and insurance (avoiding risk); see Friedman, Milton and Savage, Leonard J., “The Utility Analysis of Choices Involving Risk,” Journal of Political Economy, 56 (08, 1948), 279–304 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

16 One different reinterpretation of the B term is presented in Stigler, George J., “Economic Competition and Political Competition,” Public Choice, 13 (Fall, 1972), 91–106 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.