Logic and Effects of Rational Ignorance. The Theory of Public Choice

Logic and Effects of Rational Ignorance. The Theory of Public Choice
Author: Rodrigue Bienvenue Nanfack
Publisher: GRIN Verlag
Total Pages: 22
Release: 2016-04-01
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 3668185042

Essay from the year 2010 in the subject Economics - Other, grade: 3, University of Münster (Institut für Ökonomische Bilödung), course: Public Choice Theory, language: English, abstract: Many political failure arguments implicitly assume that voters are irrational. The main part of this paper is going to show that this assumption is plausible. This paper will show why voters prefer to be ignorant, what logic motivates this behavior, what effects this ignorance could or may have in election results. The focus of this paper is to try to understand what issue those behaviors may bring to electoral systems and to try to demonstrate what irrational ignorance really is. Josh Billings (in Caruth and Ehrlich 1988, P.205) said “The trouble with people is not that they don’t know, but that they know so much that they ain’t so”; arguing with this citation, we could conclude that rational ignorance does not happen because of a lack of information, but because of a voluntary refusal of being informed. The subject won’t be informed because he doesn’t see any use in this information. Rational ignorance occurs when the cost of educating oneself on an issue exceeds the potential benefit that the knowledge would provide. Rational ignorance can be found most often in the case of general elections, when the voter considers the probability of his vote changing the outcome to be pretty small. Those voters will definitely not cast their vote.

The Oxford Handbook of Public Choice

The Oxford Handbook of Public Choice
Author: Roger D. Congleton
Publisher:
Total Pages: 1017
Release: 2019
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 0190469773

The Oxford Handbook of Public Choice provides a comprehensive overview of the research in economics, political science, law, and sociology that has generated considerable insight into the politics of democratic and authoritarian systems as well as the influence of different institutional frameworks on incentives and outcomes. The result is an improved understanding of public policy, public finance, industrial organization, and macroeconomics as the combination of political and economic analysis shed light on how various interests compete both within a given rules of the games and, at times, to change the rules. These volumes include analytical surveys, syntheses, and general overviews of the many subfields of public choice focusing on interesting, important, and at times contentious issues. Throughout the focus is on enhancing understanding how political and economic systems act and interact, and how they might be improved. Both volumes combine methodological analysis with substantive overviews of key topics. This second volume examines constitutional political economy and also various applications, including public policy, international relations, and the study of history, as well as methodological and measurement issues. Throughout both volumes important analytical concepts and tools are discussed, including their application to substantive topics. Readers will gain increased understanding of rational choice and its implications for collective action; various explanations of voting, including economic and expressive; the role of taxation and finance in government dynamics; how trust and persuasion influence political outcomes; and how revolution, coups, and authoritarianism can be explained by the same set of analytical tools as enhance understanding of the various forms of democracy.

Information, Participation, and Choice

Information, Participation, and Choice
Author: Bernard Grofman
Publisher: University of Michigan Press
Total Pages: 298
Release: 1993
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 9780472083435

A review of the consequences for political science of Anthony Downs's seminal work.

Democracy and Political Ignorance

Democracy and Political Ignorance
Author: Ilya Somin
Publisher: Stanford University Press
Total Pages: 277
Release: 2013-10-02
Genre: Law
ISBN: 0804789312

One of the biggest problems with modern democracy is that most of the public is usually ignorant of politics and government. Often, many people understand that their votes are unlikely to change the outcome of an election and don't see the point in learning much about politics. This may be rational, but it creates a nation of people with little political knowledge and little ability to objectively evaluate what they do know. In Democracy and Political Ignorance, Ilya Somin mines the depths of ignorance in America and reveals the extent to which it is a major problem for democracy. Somin weighs various options for solving this problem, arguing that political ignorance is best mitigated and its effects lessened by decentralizing and limiting government. Somin provocatively argues that people make better decisions when they choose what to purchase in the market or which state or local government to live under, than when they vote at the ballot box, because they have stronger incentives to acquire relevant information and to use it wisely.

Rational Choice and Democratic Government

Rational Choice and Democratic Government
Author: Tibor Rutar
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 227
Release: 2021-09-22
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1000440885

Drawing on a range of data from across disciplines, this book explores a series of fundamental questions surrounding the nature, working and effects of democracy, considering the reasons for the emergence and spread of democratic government, the conditions under which it endures or collapses – and the role of wealth in this process – and the peaceful nature of dealings between democracies. With emphasis on the ‘ordinary’ voter, the author employs rational choice theory to examine the motivations of voters and their levels of political knowledge and rationality, as well as the special interests, incentives and corruption of politicians. A theoretically informed and empirically illustrated study of the birth and downfall of democracies, the extent of voters’ political knowledge and ignorance, the logic of political behaviour in both open and closed regimes, and the international effects of democratic rule, Rational Choice and Democratic Government: A Sociological Approach will appeal to scholars with interests in political sociology, political psychology, economics and political science.

The Calculus of Consent

The Calculus of Consent
Author: James M. Buchanan
Publisher: University of Michigan Press
Total Pages: 388
Release: 1965
Genre: Decision-making
ISBN: 9780472061006

A scientific study of the political and economic factors influencing democratic decision making

Markets against Modernity

Markets against Modernity
Author: Ryan H. Murphy
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Total Pages: 231
Release: 2019-11-08
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1498591191

In Markets Against Modernity, economist Ryan Murphy documents a clear continuity between the systematic errors people make in their personal lives and the gaps between public opinion and informed opinion. These errors cluster around specific divergences between how the modern world’s institutions function—including global markets, pluralistic democracy, and even science itself—and how evolution trained our brains to understand the nature of economic relationships, social relationships, and humanity’s relationship to the physical world. Murphy calls these systematic divergences Ecological Irrationality. Exploring them leads him to even more prickly questions—and to conclusions that may challenge the beliefs of those who understand that, for instance, modern vaccines are safe and effective. Do we actually want a less cohesive society? Is doing a task yourself financially prudent? And if we recognize an expert consensus, is there even a way to implement it and achieve the desired effects?

A Logic of Expressive Choice

A Logic of Expressive Choice
Author: Alexander A. Schuessler
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Total Pages: 198
Release: 2000-10-29
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 9780691006628

Alexander Schuessler has done what many deemed impossible: he has wedded rational choice theory and the concerns of social theory and anthropology to explain why people vote. The "paradox of participation"--why individuals cast ballots when they have virtually no effect on electoral outcomes--has long puzzled social scientists. And it has particularly troubled rational choice theorists, who like to describe political activity in terms of incentives. Schuessler's ingenious solution is a "logic of expressive choice." He argues in incentive-based (or "economic") terms that individuals vote not because of how they believe their vote matters in the final tally but rather to express their preferences, allegiances, and thus themselves. Through a comparative history of marketing and campaigning, Schuessler generates a "jukebox model" of participation and shows that expressive choice has become a target for those eliciting mass participation and public support. Political advisers, for example, have learned to target voters' desire to express--to themselves and to others--who they are. Candidates, using tactics such as claiming popularity, invoking lifestyle, using ambiguous campaign themes, and shielding supporters from one another can get out their vote even when it is clear that an election is already lost or won. This important work, the first of its kind, will appeal to anyone seeking to decipher voter choice and turnout, social movements, political identification, collective action, and consumer behavior, including scholars, graduate students, and upper-level undergraduates in political science, economics, sociology, anthropology, and marketing. It will contribute greatly to our understanding and prediction of democratic participation patterns and their consequences.

The Oxford Handbook of Public Choice

The Oxford Handbook of Public Choice
Author: Roger D. Congleton
Publisher:
Total Pages: 985
Release: 2019
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 0190469730

"This two-volume collection provides a comprehensive overview of the past seventy years of public choice research, written by experts in the fields surveyed. The individual chapters are more than simple surveys, but provide readers with both a sense of the progress made and puzzles that remain. Most are written with upper level undergraduate and graduate students in economics and political science in mind, but many are completely accessible to non-expert readers who are interested in Public Choice research. The two-volume set will be of broad interest to social scientists, policy analysts, and historians"--

A Theory of Justice

A Theory of Justice
Author: John RAWLS
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Total Pages: 624
Release: 2009-06-30
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 0674042603

Though the revised edition of A Theory of Justice, published in 1999, is the definitive statement of Rawls's view, so much of the extensive literature on Rawls's theory refers to the first edition. This reissue makes the first edition once again available for scholars and serious students of Rawls's work.