What is the median voter theorem? Is it valid?
OR
If citizens do not always vote in a rationally self-interested manner, is there any value to public choice theory?
Key readings
- Roger Congleton, The median voter model, in Charles Rowley & Friedrich Schneider (eds.), The Encyclopedia of Public Choice, Dordrecht: Kluwer, 2004, vol. 2, pp. 382-387.
- Anthony Downs, An economic theory of political action in a democracy, Journal of Political Economy, vol. 65, no. 2 (April, 1957), pp. 135-150.
- Donald Green & Ian Shapiro, Spatial theories of electoral competition, in Pathologies of Rational Choice Theory: A Critique of Applications in Political Science, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1994, ch. 7.
Further reading
- Duncan Black, The Theory of Committees and Elections, 2nd ed., Dordrecht: Springer, 1998.
- Anthony Downs, An Economic Theory of Democracy, New York: Harper, 1957, chs. 1-4.
- Patrick Dunleavy, Democracy, Bureaucracy and Public Choice: Economic Explanations in Political Science, New York: Harvester, 1991, chs. 2-3 [theory of groups] and 5 [median voter theorem].
- Iain McLean, Public Choice: An Introduction, Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1987, chs. 1, 3-5.
- Alexander Hamilton, James Madison & John Jay, The Federalist Papers, New York: J. and A. McLean, 1788, nos. 10 and 51.
- Mancur Olson, Power and Prosperity: Outgrowing Communist and Capitalist Dictatorships, New York: Basic Books, 2000, chs. 1-5.
- Mancur Olson, The Logic of Collective Action: Public Goods and the Theory of Groups, Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1965, esp. chs. 1-2, 5-6.
- Charles Rowley (ed.), Democracy and Public Choice, Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1987.
- ʹAmbition must be made to counteract ambitionʹ (James Madison, The Federalist 51). What did Madison mean?
- Can rational choice theory help explain why some interests in society are better organized than others?
- Does the public choice approach to democracy assume that everyone is selfish?