ISBN: Ostalo
Godina izdanja: 1957
Jezik: Engleski
Autor: Strani

U dobrom stanju, zaštitni omog lošiji.

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Harper and Row
Publication date ‏ : ‎ January 1, 1957
Edition ‏ : ‎ First Edition
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Print length ‏ : ‎ 310 pages

I. BASIC STRUCTURE OF THE MODEL. 1. Introduction. 2. Party Motivation and the Function of Government in Society. 3. The Basic Logic of Voting. 4. The Basic Logic of Government Decision-Making. II. THE GENERAL EFFECTS OF UNCERTAINTY. 5. The Meaning of Uncertainty. 6. How Uncertainty Affects Government Decision-Making. 7. The Development of Political Ideologies as Means of Getting Votes. 8. The Statics and Dynamics of Party Ideologies 9. Problems of Rationality Under Coalition Governments. 10. Government Vote-Maximizing and Individual marginal Equilibrium. III. SPECIFIC EFFECTS OF INFORMATION COSTS. 11. The Process of Becoming Informed. 12. How Rational Citizens Reduce Information Costs. 13. The Returns From Information and Their Diminution. 14. The Causes and Effects of Rational Abstention. IV. DERIVATIVE IMPLICATIONS AND HYPOTHESIS. 15. A Comment on Economic Theories of Government Behavior. 16. Testable Prepositions Derived from the Theory.

Described by advance readers as `a pile-driver of a book in political science` and `a very rare trailblazing work that should make a deep impact for years to come,` this new Harper book is the first successful attempt to organize much of political science into one formal theoretical system.

AN ECONOMIC THEORY OF DEMOCRACY
by Anthony Downs

This new volume by a brilliant young Stanford Ph.D. has been described by Charles E. Lindblom of the Yale University Department of Economics as `bold, imaginative, creative, and persuasive beyond any expectation . . . an impressive theory in the classical sense.` It fills an important gap in economic theory by advancing a decision-rule for governments comparable to the decision-rules assigned to consumers and firms in present theory. The book proposes a decision-making rule which explains government behavior in the economy but does not rely on assumptions inconsistent with theories of private economic action; shows that political behavior often considered irrational is in fact an intelligent response to the economic conditions; and demonstrates that economic theory and political theory are interdependent insofar as they deal with government behavior.

To accomplish these ends, a model democratic state is constructed which is based on the following assumptions: that both voters and political parties behave rationally at all times; that the goal of every political party, including the one now in power, is to gain and keep office, not to maximize social welfare; and that the goal of every voter is to maximize his own utility.

The analysis is carried out in three parts. In the first, the logical structure of political decision-making is considered in a world where `perfect information` prevails. The second part explores the impact of uncertainty on the behavior of parties and voters. The last part examines the specific ways in which information costs influence political behavior. This analysis makes clear that traditional political theory of democracy ignores vital economic facts, and shows up the attempts on the part of economists to theorize about government behavior, assigning motives to governments inconsistent with those they assign to private agents.

Anthony Downs has been a Woodrow Wilson and an Earhart Foundation Fellow, and is a graduate of Carleton College with a B.A. in political theory and international relations. He obtained the M.A. and Ph.D. in economics at Stanford University in 1956, and was a teaching assistant in the Economics Department at Stanford for three years. Dr. Downs has written many technical articles on real estate management, slums, and economic theory of political action, and has worked for the Real Estate Research Corporation (a private consulting firm) doing surveys, reports, and analyses on slum areas, retail shopping centers, the growth of population groups in large cities, etc.

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An Economic Theory of Democracy is a treatise of economics written by Anthony Downs, published in 1957.[1] The book set forth a model with precise conditions under which economic theory could be applied to non-market political decision-making. It also suggested areas of empirical research that could be tested to confirm the validity of his conclusions in the model. Much of this offshoot research eventually became integrated into public choice theory. Downs` theory abstains from making normative statements about public policy choices and instead focuses on what is rational, given the relevant incentives, for government to do.

Contents
In chapter eight of the book Downs explains how the concept of ideology is central to his theory. Depending on the ideological distribution of voters in a given political community, electoral outcomes can be stable and peaceful or wildly varied and even result in violent revolution. The likely number of political parties can also be identified if one also considers the electoral structure. If the ideological positions of voters are displayed in the form of a graph and if that graph shows a single peak, then a median voter can be identified and in a representative democracy, the choice of candidates and the choice of policies will gravitate toward the positions of the median voter. Conversely, if the graph of ideological distribution is double-peaked, indicating that most voters are either extremely liberal or extremely conservative, the tendency toward political consensus or political equilibrium is difficult to attain because legislators representing each mode are penalized by voters for attempting to achieve consensus with the other side by supporting policies representative of a middle position. Here is a list of the key propositions Downs attempts to prove in chapter eight:

A two-party democracy cannot provide stable and effective government unless there is a large measure of ideological consensus among its citizens.

Parties in a two-party system deliberately change their platforms so that they resemble one another; whereas parties in a multi-party system try to remain as ideologically distinct from each other as possible.

If the distribution of ideologies in a society`s citizenry remains constant, its political system will move toward a position of equilibrium in which the number of parties and their ideological positions are stable over time.

New parties can be most successfully launched immediately after some significant change in the distribution of ideological views among eligible voters.
In a two-party system, it is rational for each party to encourage voters to be irrational by making its platform vague and ambiguous.
The conditions under which his theory prevails are outlined in chapter two. Many of these conditions have been challenged by later scholarship. In anticipation of such criticism, Downs quotes Milton Friedman in chapter two that: “Theoretical models should be tested primarily by the accuracy of their predictions rather than by the reality of their assumptions”.

In a 2004 study, Bernard Grofman argued that `A careful reading of Downs offers a much more sophisticated and nuanced portrait of the factors affecting party differentiation than the simplistic notion that, in plurality elections, we ought to expect party convergence to the views of the median voter.` According to Grofman, recent research in the Downsian tradition expected nonconvergence of parties in a two-party democracy.[


Ekonomska teorija demokratije
Entoni Dauns