Is It Irrational to Vote?

Abstract

1. See Duncan Black, The Theory of Committees and Elections (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1951); Anthony Downs, An Economic Theory of Democracy (New York: Harper and Row, 1957); James M. Buchanan and Gordon Tullock, The Calculus of Consent (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1962); and Mancur Olson, The Logic of Collective Action (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1965). Anticipations of rational actor models can be found as remotely as the Hellenic and Hellenistic periods. Jane Mansbridge notes that some presocratic philosophers, such as Gorgias and Protagoras, argued that self-interest bound men together in society and that laws were necessary to protect the weak from the strong: Jane J. Mansbridge, Self-Interest in the Explanation of Political Life, in Beyond Self-Interest, ed. Jane J. Mansbridge (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1990), pp. 3-22. See also W. K. C. Guthrie, The Greek Philosophers (New York: Harper and Row, Harper Torchbooks, 1960), pp. 63-80; and Plato, The Republic, trans. Paul Shorey, in The Collected Dialogues of Plato, ed. Edith Hamilton and Huntington Cairns (New York: Putnam, 1961). Similarly, the Hellenistic philosopher Carn6ade (c. 213-128 B.c.) argued that all people are egoists and that ethical notions were invented by the least-evil egoists to regulate the most-evil egoists. See Jeanne Croissant, La Morale de Carneade, Revue Internationale de Philosophie, 1 (1938): 545-70, and, for more general comment, see Paul Veyne, Le Pain et Le Cirque: Sociologie Historique d'Unpluralisme Politique (Paris: Seuil, 1976). Unfortunately, none of Carneade's writings are extant; his teachings are known only indirectly through criticisms by Epicureans and Stoics. Nevertheless his theory of probability and action may entitle him to claim as the first rational choice theorist. It should be noted, however, that citing these as anticipations is little anachronistic. S-the self-interest theory-is peculiar vision of capitalist society-a crystallization of capitalist decision making, if you like; and, as Robert Heilbroner points out, the behavioral dispositions and beliefs essential to the workings of capitalism were not fully developed until the late 18th century: Heilbroner, The Nature and Logic of Capitalism (New York: Norton, 1986), pp. 107-40. Christianity undoubtedly had an influence as well; see R. H. Tawney, Religion and the Rise of Capitalism: A Historical Study (Gloucester: P. Smith, 1962). Mansbridge cites Havelock's claim that a basic split between the moral and ideal and the expedient or selfish did not develop until Christian otherworldly influences had begun to affect the vocabulary and mind of the West: Mansbridge, Beyond Self-Interest, p. 305. Havelock's comments are in Eric A. Havelock, The Liberal Temper in Greek Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1964). See also Carl Polanyi, The Great Transformation: The Political and Economic Origins of Our Time (Boston: Beacon Books, 1944).