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Vindicating Anthony Downs

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 October 2005

Mark M. Gray  and
A Wuffle
Mark M. Gray
Affiliation:
Georgetown University
A Wuffle
Affiliation:
University of California, Irvine
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Extract

Positive turnout rates in the United States and elsewhere are widelyconsidered “an embarrassing limitation of the economic approach topolitics” because, for any one voter, “the costs of casting a ballotin any large election are almost always greater than the potentialbenefits, which are dependent on the unlikely occurrence of castingthe winning or tie vote in an election” (Knack1992, 133). Green and Shapiro (1994), whose scathing critique of the rational choicefield centers on the work of Anthony Downs (1957), trenchantly put it: “Rational choice theoristshave trotted out an astonishing variety of conjectures about thecosts and benefits of voting, in the process generating an enormousliterature, possibly larger in terms of academic citations and sheerbibliographic length than any other rational choice literature inAmerican politics” (47–48), yet they still have no answer as to whypeople vote when, according to their arguments, reason says theyought not. Grofman (1993), paraphrasingMorris Fiorina, has referred to the failure of rational choicetheory to explain turnout as the “paradox that ate rationalchoice.”We are indebted to CloverBehrend-Gethard for bibliographic assistance.

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Type
The Profession
Information
PS: Political Science & Politics , Volume 38 , Issue 4 , October 2005 , pp. 737 - 740
Copyright
© 2005 The American Political Science Association

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