Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- 1 Ethics, politics, and public choice
- 2 The logic of electoral choice
- 3 The nature of expressive returns
- 4 The analytics of decisiveness
- 5 The theory of electoral outcomes: implications for public choice theory
- 6 From anecdote to analysis
- 7 Interpreting the numbers
- 8 Consensus, efficiency, and contractarian justification
- 9 Paternalism, self-paternalism, and the state
- 10 Toward a democratic morality
- 11 Constitutional implications
- Bibliography
- Index
4 - The analytics of decisiveness
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- 1 Ethics, politics, and public choice
- 2 The logic of electoral choice
- 3 The nature of expressive returns
- 4 The analytics of decisiveness
- 5 The theory of electoral outcomes: implications for public choice theory
- 6 From anecdote to analysis
- 7 Interpreting the numbers
- 8 Consensus, efficiency, and contractarian justification
- 9 Paternalism, self-paternalism, and the state
- 10 Toward a democratic morality
- 11 Constitutional implications
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
Rational choice modellers will be able to explain voting and non-voting as soon as they can solve the problem of why people salute the flag when they know that nobody is looking.
Grofman, “Models of Voter Turnout”Introduction
In the foregoing chapters, we have developed a theory of electoral preference which exploits the fact that electoral “choice” by a single individual is intrinsically nondecisive. For expositional purposes we have at times talked as if the probability of being decisive in large-number electorates is quite negligible. Nevertheless, in the fomulation of our central proposition (Proposition 1 in Chapter 2) we were careful to emphasize that the underlying logic does not depend on the particular value of the probability of being decisive, given only that that value is significantly less than one. Clearly, however, the probability of being decisive is an important parameter in the whole argument, and it is therefore important for us to devote some attention to its value. Interestingly, this is a matter on which there is some disagreement. Some writers claim that, under most reasonable assumptions, the probability of being decisive is virtually infinitesimal (see, e.g., Meehl, 1977). Others, such as Beck (1975), argue that it is, though small, by no means negligible. And yet others – most conspicuously Palfrey and Rosenthal (1983) – claim that it may be remarkably high, and certainly large enough to provide an interest-based explanation of the turnouts that are actually observed in Western democratic experience.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Democracy and DecisionThe Pure Theory of Electoral Preference, pp. 54 - 73Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1993