Book Summary In his book "An Economic Theory of Democracy," Anthony Downs uses rational choice theory approach

to provide a "behavior rule for democratic governments," similar to the behavior rule of the rational citizens of such democracies, assuming that governments are indeed rational as they are comprised on rational individuals and decision-makers (1). He asserts that a theorist has only to know a decision-maker's ends or goals or any rational person's ends for that matter to predict his/her actions based on the most reasonable course of action that will lead to the attainment of said ends. Reasonable, here, denotes the action that would require "the least input of scarce resources per unit of valued output;" opting for such course makes the actor rational (3). This follows from the definition of rational as "efficient, i.e., maximizing output for a given input, or minimizing input for a given output" (3). This, by turn, entails the balancing of the costs of a certain action against its benefits or returns as well. Downs structures his model around the assumption that the goal of the government is to be reelected and the goal of the voter to maximize the utility resulting from his/her vote, and by extension the winning of the party s/he has elected. Downs' study is concerned with democracies per se, because rationality is most effective in such environments. This is due to the assumptions that democracies function under three main conditions: the existence of opposition, uncertainty, electorate of voters who are rational and are free to pursue the actions dictated by their rationality (20). To parties, comprised of individuals, the end is to maximize votes (i.e., to be elected and thus controlling the governing apparatus) and the reasonable means to this goal is adopting policies that are designed to garner the maximum number of voters at the lowest cost possible. To individuals comprising parties, the end is to enjoy the "income, power, and

prestige" that comes with holding office (34). The two goals are complementary since the latter can be accomplished only if the former is. To citizens, as voters, the end is to maximize his/her utility income; the means to that is to vote so as to facilitate the victory of a particular party whose policies are believed to maximize the utility income in the future. Given the uncertainty surrounding the situation, especially in the future, the rational action will be for the voter to compare the stream of utility he received over the last term from party A with what he thinks he would have received from party B had it been in office instead of party A. He would vote for the winner in this comparison, assuming a two-party system. If B would have provided the same benefits and utility as A, albeit via different means, then the voter compares the utility s/he received from A to the one s/he received from the party which had held office directly before A; if there was an increase in the utility, s/he votes for A, if there was a decrease, s/he will abstain (50). The government maximizes political support by spending so as to garner more votes; however, such acts of financing are bound to lose votes at the same time. Rational governments, according to Downs, stop spending when the "marginal vote gain equals the marginal vote loss" resulting from financing (73). The most rational action would be for governments to conduct a poll so as to estimate how many voters' utility income is affected positively and how many are affected negatively, by the expenditure/ financing, so as to estimate the corresponding vote gain vis--vis the vote loss it will face as a result of its relevant strategy. However, since governments are competing with other parties, they also have to consider its opponents strategies and platform as well. Downs notes the reciprocal relationship between governments and voters in that "since governments plan actions to please voters and voters decide how to vote on the basis of governments actions, a circular

relation of mutual interdependence underlies the function of government in a democracy" (74). Nevertheless, although rational action may seem the intuitive action to follow to maximize utility, sometimes obstacles, such as lack of knowledge, makes determining what is rational and what is not most difficult. In rational choice theory, and Downs' model, such "any lack of sure knowledge about the course of events" is known as uncertainty (81). Whether the lack of knowledge is in contextual knowledge (causal relationships) or information (data on variables) it serves to make the assessment of the most efficient action towards a utility very hard and incomplete. Such uncertainty could surface in decisionmaking processes, voting, policy-making, etc to affect all political actors (81). Uncertainty leads uncertain and unconfident actors, including voters, to seek information to complete their knowledge, which opens the door wide open to persuasion by all kinds of other competing actors. It leads to the exploitation of the situation by some other actors by providing biased information (94). It gives interest groups and certain actors whose interest is to advance certain policies the opportunity to provide voters with biased (one-sided and selective) information about such policies, serving to influence the public opinion in light of the absence of more objective knowledge (94). Under such states of incomplete uncertainty, assuming that adequate knowledge is available to some but not all voters, governments are forced to value some voters over others, which undermines the purpose of universal suffrage (95). Another impact of uncertainty is the reliance and dominance of ideology. In cases of uncertainty, voters are incapable of relating government acts and policies to their individual views of what is good; thus, knowing "each party's view of the good society its ideology helps [the voter]" vote without knowing each and every policy of that party and voters "cut

their information costs" (113). Parties use ideologies to cut costs of deciding which policy will gain the most votes and depend for formulating policies on ideological affiliations of voters so that policies are consistent with the ideological values of the voters and the targeted social groups (113). The rational course for parties to take in a two-party system is to foster ambiguity through center-oriented policies and policies that are spread across the spectrum and not concentrated at one side.

If political ideologies are actually the means to the end of obtaining votes, and if we know something about the distribution of voters' ideological preferences, we can make predictions about how parties will change their ideologies as they maneuver to gain power. Conversely, we can state the conditions under which different parties' ideologies come to resemble each other, diverge from each other, or remain in some fixed relationship.

1. A two-party democracy cannot provide stable and effective government unless there is a large measure of ideological consensus among its citizens. If voter preferences are bimodally distributed, there will be two parties who differ ideologically in significant ways. Whichever party wins will attempt to implement policies which are radially opposed to the other party's ideology. This means that government policy is likely to produce chaos. The appearance of a balancing center party is unlikely, since any party forming in the center will be forced to move toward one extreme or the other to get votes, since there are so few voters with moderate preferences. 2. Parties in a 2-party system deliberately change their platforms so that they resemble one another. Parties in a multi-party system try to remain as ideologically distinct from each other as possible. In a two-party system where voter preferences are normally distributed, parties will grow more and more ideologically similar in an

effort to garner votes. The possibility that parties will be kept from converging ideologically depends on the refusal of extremist voters to support either party if both became similar; abstention becomes (in a certain world, if the actor is future oriented) rational as a strategy extremist voters use against the party nearest them to keep that party from moving toward its opponent. Multiparty systems arise where preferences are multimodal. 3. If the distribution of ideological preferences remains constant across voters, the political system will move toward a position of equilibrium in which the number of parties and their ideological positions are stable over time. The number of parties at equilibrium depends on i) the nature of the limit on the introduction of new parties and ii) the shape of the distribution of voters. i) In order to survive, a party needs some minimum of voters to support it. This minimum depends on the type of electoral system. In a winner take all system, a party must win more votes than any other party running in order to survive. This arrangement encourages parties which repeatedly lose to merge until the survivors have a reasonable chance of winning; this tends to narrow the field to two parties. In a proportional representation system, the minimum amount of support to keep a party going is greatly reduced, so a multiparty system is encouraged. ii) multiparty systems are most likely to arise when the distribution of voter preferences is multimodal. Because of the distribution of voter preferences, parties will strive to distinguish themselves from one another. Voters in multiparty systems are much more likely to be swayed by matters of ideology and policy than are voters in two party systems (the latter being massed in the moderate range where both ideologies lie, and hence being more likely to be swayed by personality or some other nonideological factor; since they are not really offered much choice between policies,

they may need other factors by which to discriminate between partiessee 5 below). 4. New parties can be most successfully launched immediately after some significant change in the distribution of ideological views among voters. There are two kinds of new parties: parties designed to win elections, and parties designed to influence already existing parties' policies. The latter are blackmail parties. Ross Perot's intention was to be a real party (to actually become president of the United States, the little fascist), but his effect was to be an influence party: the Democratic party's (and the Republican's) policy positions were changed because of him. A change in the distribution of voters can effect the development of new parties (eg, the enfranchisement of the working class); it is not the number of new voters, but the distribution of their preferences that matters (eg, women's suffrage didn't create any new parties, though it basically doubled the number of voters). 5. In a two-party system, it is rational for each party to encourage voters to be irrational by making its platform vague and ambiguous. Each party casts some policies into the other's territory (see the Democrats and crime) in order to convince voters there that its net position is near them. In the middle of the scale, where most voters are massed, each party scatters its policies on either side of the middle (this causes an enormous overlapping of moderate policies). Each party will sprinkle these moderate stands with a few extreme stands in order to please its far out voters (as Clinton did originally with the gays in the military thing). It is possible to detect on which side of the ideological continuum a party lies by looking at the extremist policies it espouses (this may be the only way to make such a detection, since both parties are so similarly moderate). Both parties are trying to be as ambiguous as possible about their actual net position. Ambiguity increases the number of voters to which a party can appeal. Since both parties find it rational to be ambiguous, neither

is forced by the other's clarity to take a stand. This ambiguity makes it difficult for voters to act rationally: voters are encouraged to make their decisions based on some other factor than the issues (personality, habit, etc.).

Problems of Rationality Under Coalition Governments: In some political systems, only rarely does any one party receive over half the votes cast. Hence coalitions are formed so government may still by consent by the governed (the majority of the voting). In such a system, one individual's ballot does not support the policies of any one party. Instead, it supports the whole coalition that party joins. Thus the meaning of a vote for any party depends upon what coalitions it is likely to enter, which in turn depends upon how other voters will vote. Each voter makes his/her decision only after he/she estimates other voters' decisions. This creates a vicious circle in that everybody make their decisions based on everybody else's decisions, which means that there no independent variables or decisions in this case. In this case, a voter will either abstain (rational), or decide that it is just easier to vote for favorite party regardless of the coalition that it might form depending on other votes (which is irrational). Thus, some voters are driven by the difficulty of rationally selecting a government to treat elections as expressions of preference, which is irrational in our model.

The Process of Becoming Informed Decision making is a process which consumes all kind of resources, scarce and otherwise, like time. Hence, economy must be practiced in determining how many resources shall be employed in it (keeping in mind that rationality here means

maximizing output using the least input possible or minimizing input for the most output possible). Resources here are the input, decisions are outputs. This fact forces decision-makers to select only a part of the total available information for use in making choices (for instance if I want to select a part for which I will vote, I (as a young single woman)will need to select a number, not all, policies in which I am interested in and vote accordingly). The principles or criteria of selection they use depend upon the end for which the information is a means. In a complex society, information which is used by one citizen is often gathered, transmitted, and analyzed by others. If the user is to know what his information really means in terms of his decision-making, he must be sure these others have the same principles of selection he has, or know how their principles differ from his. Even choosing one's own selection principles is difficult, but by a process of trial and error, each rational citizen finds a set that best serves his political ends and he must check his data frequently so as to detect any deviation from the selection principles. The rational individual in this model thinks in terms of cost-return (input vs output).At least the input has to equal the output. (Is it worth it?) How do we compute the cost-return of acquiring information?

The return or benefit from information is is computed by: 1. first weighing the importance of of making a right instead of a wrong decision. 2. To this value is applied the probability that the bit of information being considered will be useful in making this decision. 3. The cost is the opportunity cost of acquiring this bit of information, which is the cost of the alternative that must be forgone in order to pursue a acquiring this particular bit

of information. Put another way, the benefits you could have received by taking an alternative action. The decision maker continues to aquire information until the return equals the cost to him/her.