An election is a formal group decision-making process by which a population chooses an individual or multiple individuals to hold public office.
William Harrison Riker was an American political scientist who is prominent for applying game theory and mathematics to political science. He helped to establish University of Rochester as a center of behavioral revolution in political science.
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.
Accountability, in terms of ethics and governance, is equated with answerability, blameworthiness, liability, and the expectation of account-giving. As in an aspect of governance, it has been central to discussions related to problems in the public sector, nonprofit and private (corporate) and individual contexts. In leadership roles, accountability is the acknowledgment and assumption of responsibility for actions, products, decisions, and policies including the administration, governance, and implementation within the scope of the role or employment position and encompassing the obligation to report, justify and be answerable for resulting consequences.
Duncan Black, FBA was a Scottish economist who laid the foundations of social choice theory. In particular he was responsible for unearthing the work of many early political scientists, including Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, and was responsible for the Black electoral system, a Condorcet method whereby, in the absence of a Condorcet winner, the Borda winner is chosen.
In political science, voter turnout is the participation rate of a given election. This is typically either the percentage of registered voters, eligible voters, or all voting-age people. According to Stanford University political scientists Adam Bonica and Michael McFaul, there is a consensus among political scientists that "democracies perform better when more people vote."
Moderate is an ideological category which designates a rejection of radical or extreme views, especially in regard to politics and religion. A moderate is considered someone occupying any mainstream position avoiding extreme views. In American politics, a moderate is considered someone occupying a centre position on the left–right political spectrum.
The median voter theorem is a proposition relating to ranked preference voting put forward by Duncan Black in 1948. It states that if voters and policies are distributed along a one-dimensional spectrum, with voters ranking alternatives in order of proximity, then any voting method which satisfies the Condorcet criterion will elect the candidate closest to the median voter. In particular, a majority vote between two options will do so.
Positive political theory (PPT) or explanatory political theory is the study of politics using formal methods such as social choice theory, game theory, and statistical analysis. In particular, social choice theoretic methods are often used to describe and (axiomatically) analyze the performance of rules or institutions. The outcomes of the rules or institutions described are then analyzed by game theory, where the individuals/parties/nations involved in a given interaction are modeled as rational agents playing a game, guided by self-interest. Based on this assumption, the outcome of the interactions can be predicted as an equilibrium of the game.
Calculus of voting refers to any mathematical model which predicts voting behaviour by an electorate, including such features as participation rate. A calculus of voting represents a hypothesized decision-making process.
Thomas Rossman Palfrey is the Flintridge Professor of Economics and Political Science at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) in Pasadena, California, and Fellow of the Econometric Society. He received his Ph.D. in Social Science from Caltech in 1981.
Melvin Jay "Mel" Hinich was a professor of government and economics at the University of Texas at Austin. Hinich was also a research professor at UT's Applied Research Laboratories. Known as an expert in political science with a long record of distinction in a number of fields, he wrote seven books and published more than 200 papers in statistics/statistical theory, signal processing, economics, political science, biomedical engineering, pharmacy, and library science.
Vincent Alfred Ostrom was an American political economist and the Founding Director of the Ostrom Workshop based at Indiana University and the Arthur F. Bentley Professor Emeritus of Political Science. He and his wife, the political economist Elinor Ostrom, made numerous contributions to the field of political science, political economy, and public choice.
The term issue voting describes when voters cast their vote in elections based on political issues. In the context of an election, issues include "any questions of public policy which have been or are a matter of controversy and are sources of disagreement between political parties.” According to the theory of issue voting, voters compare the candidates' respective principles against their own in order to decide for whom to vote.
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.
The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to politics and political science:
Rebecca Morton was an American political scientist. She was Professor of Political Science at New York University New York and New York University Abu Dhabi.
Heresthetic is an approach to understanding how political actors manipulate the decision-making process so they can win. Heresthetic is a positive political theory, including aspects of game theory, public choice theory, rational choice theory, and social choice theory to political science. Political scientist William H. Riker is considered the creator and one of the most prominent supports of theory.
The 1816 Indiana gubernatorial election took place on August 5, 1816, under the provisions of the recently ratified Constitution of Indiana. It was the first gubernatorial election in the State of Indiana. Jonathan Jennings, the longtime U.S. territorial delegate from Indiana and president of the state's constitutional convention, defeated Thomas Posey, the incumbent territorial governor, with 56.9% of the vote. The election was held concurrently with elections for lieutenant governor and members of the Indiana General Assembly.
In social choice theory, the spatial model of voting is used to simulate the behavior of voters in an election, either to explain voter behavior, or to estimate the likelihood of desirable or undesirable outcomes under different voting systems.
