Preferences and Democracy: Villa Colombella Papers: 28 (International Studies in Economics and Econometrics, 28) - Hardcover

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 079239321X ISBN 13: 9780792393214

Publisher: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1993

Synopsis

I. Until about a dozen years ago, the economic analysis of the relationship between political preferences and political demands was a rather straightforward, if dull, subject. The most common assumption was that the only political instrument available to citizens was the vote. Given this assumption, the analyst could express the outcome of the voting process in one of two ways. One possibility was to make the heroic assumptions necessary to obtain the median voter theorem, in which case, the political demands of the citizenry are simply the preferences of the median voter. The alternative was to make Arrow's Impossibility Theorem in which case even though individual preferences are well ordered, no collective preference function exists. On either of these approaches, institutions such as interest groups, political parties, or the structures ofpolitical representation played no role in the analysis. The work of "Chicago" scholars especially George Stigler, Gary Becker and Sam Peltzman took a different approach and emphasized the importanceoforganizationinmakingpoliticaldemandseffective, shifting thefocus from voting topolitical "pressure" byinterestgroups. However, in these models, voting as an instrument of political action simply disappears and the relationship between interest group pressures and electoral processes has never been clarified.

About this title

Product Description

Preferences and Democracy Villa Colombella Papers

Synopsis

This book is a selection of papers presented at the Fourth Villa Colombella Seminar on the topic of the relationship between the preferences of citizens for public policies and how (or whether) these get expressed as political demands by interest groups, political parties and governments. "Preferences and Democracy" features contributions from prominent North American and European scholars with up-to-date commentary and surveys of standard topics, including probabilistic voting, the conver-gence of political parties, and redistribution. New topics are addressed, including how political institutions provide bridges between demand and supply; how the political process in a democracy sometimes "represses" political demand. "Preferences and Democracy" addresses the important issue of how the democratic political process succeeds or fails in facilitating the expression of the political demands of the people. The book is a vital reference for students and specialists in economics and political science.

Edition details

• Publisher: Kluwer Academic Publishers
• Publication date: 1993
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 079239321X
• ISBN 13: 9780792393214
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 397
• Editor: Breton Alb., Galeotti P., Salmon P., Wintrobe R.