User:Thomasmeeks/Rough draft4

Public choice

Democracy

One of the basic claims that results from public choice theory is that good government policies in a democracy are an underprovided public good, because of the rational ignorance of the voters. Each voter is faced with a tiny probability that his vote will change the result of the elections, while gathering the relevant information necessary for a well-informed voting decision requires substantial time and effort. Therefore, the rational decision for each voter is to be generally ignorant of politics and perhaps even abstain from voting. Rational choice theorists claim that this explains the gross ignorance of most citizens in modern democracies as well as low voter turnout. Rational abstention creates the so-called "Paradox of voting" in which a strict cost-benefit analysis implies that no one should vote.

Notes

http://www.gordon.edu/ace/pdf/hill=f&e34.pdf

Bruce L. Benson and John Baden (1985). The Political Economy of Governmental Corruption: The Logic of Underground Government, Journal of Legal Studies, 14(2),, pp. 391-410.

The Demand for Good Government Michael L. Davis and Kathy Hayes The Review of Economics and Statistics Vol. 75, No. 1 (Feb., 1993), pp. 148-152

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0304387806000587 Journal of Development Economics Volume 82, Issue 2, March 2007, Pages 287–314 The political economy of public goods: Some evidence from India Abhijit Banerjeea, , , Rohini Somanathanb,

Timothy, Besley (2007). Principled Agents?: The Political Economy of Good Government, Oxford. Description.

http://books.google.com/books?id=YUVMr-aFYwYC&pg=find&pg=PA32#v=onepage&q&f=false 2004 The Encyclopedia of Public Choice, Volume 2 Mueller Public Choice: An Introduction

http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/1958779 Parties as Utility Maximizers Donald A. Wittman The American Political Science Review Vol. 67, No. 2 (Jun., 1973), pp. 490-498

http://www.researchgate.net/publication/4975682_Candidates_with_policy_preferences_A_dynamic_model Candidates with policy preferences: A dynamic model Donald Wittman Journal of Economic Theory 01/1977; 14(1):180-189.

http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/173882 How a War Ends: A Rational Model Approach Journal of Conflict Resolution December 1979 vol. 23 no. 4 743-763

http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/1956016 Candidate Motivation: A Synthesis of Alternative Theories Donald Wittman The American Political Science Review Vol. 77, No. 1 (Mar., 1983), pp. 142-157

Wittman, Donald. 1989. "Why Democracies Produce Efficient Results," Journal of Political Economy. 97(6), pp. 1395–1424.

http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=q8ewwdvzdnkC&oi=fnd&pg=PR7&dq=#v=onepage&q&f=false http://www.press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/M/bo3683754.html The Myth of Democratic Failure: Why Political Institutions Are Efficient University of Chicago Press APSA: APSA-William H. Riker Book Award Won

Donald Wittman, 2006. Economic Foundations of Law and Organization, Cambridge. Description and preview.

Weingast, Barry R., and Donald Wittman, ed., 2008. The Oxford Handbook of Political Economy. Oxford UP. Description and preview.

http://books.google.com/books?id=YUVMr-aFYwYC&pg=RA1-PA188#v=onepage&q&f=false The Encyclopedia of Public Choice, Volume 2 By Charles Kershaw Rowley, Friedrich Schneider

v. 1 & 2 TOC http://download.springer.com/static/pdf/596/bfm%253A978-0-306-47828-4%252F1.pdf?auth66=1363954201_0989bd7afcdfe18e25d214fc3171026a&ext=.pdf

Un-lib: http://freeuni.ge/uploads/public_choice_theory_by_jane_s._shaw__the_concise_encyclopedia_of_economics__library_of_economics_and_liberty.pdf

http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2FBF00115751?LI=true#page-1