Paradox of voting

Last updated
A crowd of voters queuing at a polling station in Caracas Voting queue in Caracas.jpg
A crowd of voters queuing at a polling station in Caracas

The paradox of voting, also called Downs' paradox, is that for a rational, self-interested voter, the costs of voting will normally exceed the expected benefits. Because the chance of exercising the pivotal vote is minuscule compared to any realistic estimate of the private individual benefits of the different possible outcomes, the expected benefits of voting are less than the costs.

Contents

Responses to the paradox have included the view that voters vote to express their preference for a candidate rather than affect the outcome of the election, that voters exercise some degree of altruism, or that the paradox ignores the collateral benefits associated with voting besides the resulting electoral outcome.

History of scholarship

The issue was noted by Nicolas de Condorcet in 1793 when he stated, "In single-stage elections, where there are a great many voters, each voter's influence is very small. It is therefore possible that the citizens will not be sufficiently interested [to vote]" and "... we know that this interest [which voters have in an election] must decrease with each individual's [i.e. voter's] influence on the election and as the number of voters increases." [1]

In 1821, Hegel made a similar observation in his Elements of the Philosophy of Right : "As for popular suffrage, it may be further remarked that especially in large states it leads inevitably to electoral indifference, since the casting of a single vote is of no significance where there is a multitude of electors." [2] [3]

The mathematician Charles L. Dodgson, better known as Lewis Carroll, published the paper "A Method of Taking Votes on More than Two Issues" in 1876. [4]

This problem in modern public choice theory was analysed by Anthony Downs in 1957. [5]

Responses

Alternative responses modify the postulate of egoistic rationality in various ways. For example, Geoffrey Brennan and Loren Lomasky suggest that voters derive "expressive" benefits from supporting particular candidates – analogous to cheering on a sports team – rather than voting in hopes of achieving the political outcomes they prefer. This implies that the rational behavior of voters is restricted to the instrumental as opposed to the intrinsic value they derive from their vote. [6] [7]

Another suggestion, known as the altruism theory of voting, is that voters are rational but not fully egoistic. In this view voters have some degree of altruism, and perceive a benefit if others are benefited. Since an election affects many others, it could still be rational to cast a vote with only a small chance of affecting the outcome. [8]

Some[ who? ] argue that the paradox appears to ignore the collateral benefits associated with voting, besides affecting the outcome of the vote. For instance, magnitudes of electoral wins and losses are very closely watched by politicians, their aides, pundits and voters, because they indicate the strength of support for candidates, and tend to be viewed as an inherently more accurate measure of such than mere opinion polls (which have to rely on imperfect sampling). Another argument that has been raised, is that researching who or what to vote for may increase the voter's political knowledge and community awareness, both of which may contribute to a general sense of civic duty, although in such a case the act of voting itself contributes nothing to this.[ citation needed ]

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Approval voting</span> Single-winner electoral system

Approval voting is an electoral system in which voters can select any number of candidates instead of selecting only one.

Strategic voting, also called tactical voting, sophisticated voting or insincere voting, occurs in voting systems when a voter votes for a candidate or party other than their sincere preference to prevent an undesirable outcome. For example, in a simple plurality election, a voter might gain a better outcome by voting for a less preferred but more generally popular candidate.

The Condorcet paradox in social choice theory is a situation noted by the Marquis de Condorcet in the late 18th century, in which collective preferences can be cyclic, even if the preferences of individual voters are not cyclic. This is paradoxical, because it means that majority wishes can be in conflict with each other: Suppose majorities prefer, for example, candidate A over B, B over C, and yet C over A. When this occurs, it is because the conflicting majorities are each made up of different groups of individuals.

In social choice theory and politics, the spoiler effect refers to a situation where the entry of a losing candidate affects the results of an election. A voting system that is not affected by spoilers satisfies independence of irrelevant alternatives or independence of spoilers.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Condorcet method</span> Pairwise-comparison electoral system

A Condorcet method is an election method that elects the candidate who wins a majority of the vote in every head-to-head election against each of the other candidates, whenever there is such a candidate. A candidate with this property, the pairwise champion or beats-all winner, is formally called the Condorcet winner. The head-to-head elections need not be done separately; a voter's choice within any given pair can be determined from the ranking.

Public choice, or public choice theory, is "the use of economic tools to deal with traditional problems of political science." Its content includes the study of political behavior. In political science, it is the subset of positive political theory that studies self-interested agents and their interactions, which can be represented in a number of ways—using standard constrained utility maximization, game theory, or decision theory. It is the origin and intellectual foundation of contemporary work in political economy.

Arrow's impossibility theorem is a celebrated result and key impossibility theorem in social choice theory. It shows that no ranked-choice voting rule can produce a logically coherent ranking of candidates. Specifically, no such procedure can satisfy a key criterion of decision theory, called independence of irrelevant alternatives or independence of spoilers: that the choice between and should not depend on the quality of a third, unrelated outcome .

Rational ignorance is refraining from acquiring knowledge when the supposed cost of educating oneself on an issue exceeds the expected potential benefit that the knowledge would provide.

In an election, a candidate is called a Condorcet, beats-all, or majority-rule winner if more than half of voters would support them in any one-on-one matchup with another candidate. Such a candidate is also called an undefeated, or tournament champion, by analogy with round-robin tournaments. Voting systems where a majority-rule winner will always win the election are said to satisfy the Condorcetcriterion. Condorcet voting methods extend majority rule to elections with more than one candidate.

In political science and social choice theory, the median voter theorem states that if voters and candidates are distributed along a one-dimensional spectrum and voters have single peaked preferences, any voting method satisfying the Condorcet criterion will elect the candidate preferred by the median voter.

Social choice theory or social choice is a branch of economics that analyzes mechanisms and procedures for collective decisions. Social choice incorporates insights from welfare economics, mathematics, and political science to find the best ways to combine individual opinions, preferences, or beliefs into a single coherent measure of well-being.

An Economic Theory of Democracy is a treatise of economics written by Anthony Downs, published in 1957. 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.

<i>The Myth of the Rational Voter</i> 2007 book by Bryan Caplan

The Myth of the Rational Voter: Why Democracies Choose Bad Policies is a 2007 book by the economist Bryan Caplan, in which the author challenges the idea that voters are reasonable people whom society can trust to make laws. Rather, Caplan contends that voters are irrational in the political sphere and have systematically biased ideas concerning economics.

Instant-runoff voting (IRV), also known as plurality with elimination or plurality loser, is a ranked-choice voting system that modifies plurality by repeatedly eliminating the last-place winner until only one candidate is left. In the United Kingdom, it is generally called the alternative vote (AV). In the United States, IRV is often referred to as ranked-choice voting (RCV), by way of conflation with ranked voting systems in general; however, this use is not widespread outside of North America or among election scientists.

The concept known as rational irrationality was popularized by economist Bryan Caplan in 2001 to reconcile the widespread existence of irrational behavior with the assumption of rationality made by mainstream economics and game theory. The theory, along with its implications for democracy, was expanded upon by Caplan in his book The Myth of the Rational Voter.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Electoral system</span> Method by which voters make a choice between options

An electoral system or voting system is a set of rules that determine how elections and referendums are conducted and how their results are determined. Electoral systems are used in politics to elect governments, while non-political elections may take place in business, non-profit organisations and informal organisations. These rules govern all aspects of the voting process: when elections occur, who is allowed to vote, who can stand as a candidate, how ballots are marked and cast, how the ballots are counted, how votes translate into the election outcome, limits on campaign spending, and other factors that can affect the result. Political electoral systems are defined by constitutions and electoral laws, are typically conducted by election commissions, and can use multiple types of elections for different offices.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ranked voting</span> Family of electoral systems

The term ranked voting, also known as preferential voting or ranked-choice voting, pertains to any voting system where voters indicate a rank to order candidates or options—in a sequence from first, second, third, and onwards—on their ballots. Ranked voting systems vary based on the ballot marking process, how preferences are tabulated and counted, the number of seats available for election, and whether voters are allowed to rank candidates equally.

The altruism theory of voting is a model of voter behavior which states that if citizens in a democracy have "social" preferences for the welfare of others, the extremely low probability of a single vote determining an election will be outweighed by the large cumulative benefits society will receive from the voter's preferred policy being enacted, such that it is rational for an “altruistic” citizen, who receives utility from helping others, to vote. Altruistic voting has been compared to purchasing a lottery ticket, in which the probability of winning is extremely low but the payoff is large enough that the expected benefit outweighs the cost.

A major branch of social choice theory is devoted to the comparison of electoral systems, otherwise known as social choice functions. Viewed from the perspective of political science, electoral systems are rules for conducting elections and determining winners from the ballots cast. From the perspective of economics, mathematics, and philosophy, a social choice function is a mathematical function that determines how a society should make choices, given a collection of individual preferences.

Impartial culture (IC) or the culture of indifference is a probabilistic model used in social choice theory for analyzing ranked voting method rules.

References

  1. ↑ Mclean, I. & Hewitt, F. (1994), Condorcet, Edward Elgar Publishing, Brookfield, VT, pp. 245–246. [ ISBN missing ]
  2. ↑ Terence Ball (1987), "Is There Progress in Political Science?", Idioms of Inquiry, SUNY, p.  30, ISBN   978-0887064586
  3. ↑ Buchanan, James (1974), "Hegel on the calculus of voting", Public Choice, 17 (1): 99–101, doi:10.1007/BF01719001, S2CID   154136235
  4. ↑ Black, D. (1987). The Theory of Committees and Elections. Dordrecht: Springer. pp. 46–51. doi:10.1007/978-94-009-4225-7_7. ISBN   978-9400942257.
  5. ↑ Downs, A. (1957), An Economic Theory of Democracy, Harper and Row, N.Y., 1957.[ page needed ][ ISBN missing ]
  6. ↑ Brennan, Geoffrey; Lomasky, Loren (1997). Democracy and Decision: The Pure Theory of Electoral Preference. Cambridge University Press. ISBN   0521350433.[ page needed ]
  7. ↑ Brennan, Geoffrey; Hamlin, Alan (1998). "Expressive Voting and Electoral Equilibrium". Public Choice. 95: 149–175. doi:10.1023/A:1004936203144. S2CID   152382368 . Retrieved 2 June 2021.
  8. ↑ Edlin, Aaron, Andrew Gelman, and Noah Kaplan. "Voting as a Rational Choice: Why and How People Vote To Improve the Well-Being of Others." Rationality and Society. 19.3 (2008): 293–314. Web. 22 Oct. 2012.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.