Anthony Downs, An Economic Theory of Democracy

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Russell Muirhead
Keyword(s):  
Economic Theory ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
Deliberative Democracy ◽  
Democratic Theory ◽  
Median Voter ◽  
Moral Motivation ◽  
Positive Theory ◽  
Median Voter Theorem ◽  
Theory Of Democracy ◽  
Models Of Democracy

Anthony Downs’s Economic Theory of Democracy has been marginalized in normative democratic theory, notwithstanding its prominence in positive political theory. For normative theorists, the “paradox of voting” testifies to the reality of moral motivation in politics, a species of motivation foreign to Downs’s theory and central to the ideals of deliberative democracy that normative theorists developed in the 1980s and 1990s. The deliberative ideal displaced aggregative conceptions of democracy such as Downs’s model. The ensuing segmentation of normative democratic theories that assume moral motives (like deliberative democracy) and positive models of democracy that assume selfish motives (like Downs’s theory) leaves both without the resources to diagnose the persistence of ideological partisanship and polarization that beset modern democracies. Engaging Downs’s theoretical contributions, especially the median voter theorem, would constitute a salutary step toward a democratic theory that integrates normative and positive theory.

Reading Downs: New Labour and An Economic Theory of Democracy

2005 ◽  
Vol 7 (3) ◽  
pp. 402-417 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew Hindmoor
Keyword(s):  
Economic Theory ◽  
Median Voter ◽  
New Labour ◽  
Median Voter Theorem ◽  
Theory Of Democracy

In Downs' median voter theorem parties can only increase their vote by changing their policies and moving towards the electoral centre ground. This theorem has been used to sustain a particular and, I will argue, one-sided interpretation of New Labour's actions and political trajectory. There is more to An Economic Theory of Democracy than the median voter theorem. Downs argues that voters and parties operate in conditions of uncertainty and that this gives parties the opportunity to persuade voters to revise their beliefs. Parties can win elections not only by changing their policies but by changing voters' minds. Downs' arguments about persuasion can be used to generate an alternative and very different interpretation of New Labour.

Participatory Democracy Revisited

2012 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 7-19 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carole Pateman
Keyword(s):  
Political Theory ◽  
Political Science ◽  
Deliberative Democracy ◽  
International Organizations ◽  
Democratic Theory ◽  
Participatory Democracy ◽  
Active Area ◽  
Democracy Promotion ◽  
The Past ◽  
New Form

Over the past two decades we have heard an historically unprecedented volume of talk about and praise of democracy, and many governmental, non-governmental, and international organizations have been engaged in democracy promotion. Democracy is a subject that crosses the boundaries in political science, and within my own field of political theory there has been a major revival of democratic theory. In political theory, argument about “democracy” is usually now qualified by one of an array of adjectives, which include cosmopolitan, agonistic, republican, and monitory. But the new form that has been by far the most successful is deliberative democracy. By 2007 John Dryzek could write that “deliberative democracy now constitutes the most active area of political theory in its entirety (not just democratic theory).” Not only is there an extremely large and rapidly growing literature, both theoretical and empirical, on deliberative democracy, but its influence has spread far outside universities.

Deliberative Democracy and Punishment

2002 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 373-403 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pablo de Greiff
Keyword(s):  
Political Theory ◽  
Division Of Labor ◽  
Deliberative Democracy ◽  
Political Theories ◽  
Theories Of Punishment ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Theory Of Democracy ◽  
As If

Abstract This paper contests the traditional division of labor that confines theories of punishment to the domain of moral, or at the most, legal, theories, as if punishment did not pose a challenge to political theories as well. It is thus also an attempt to clarify the relationship between moral and political theory. After pointing out that despite the recent surge in interest in different aspects of deliberative democracy, its theorists have been silent on the question of punishment, the paper argues, concretely, that this is a silence that does not serve them well, and that can be made up by establishing links between a deliberative theory of democracy and a modified expressionist theory of punishment.

scholarly journals From public reason to deliberative democracy

2016 ◽  
Vol 27 (1) ◽  
pp. 237-256
Author(s):  
Ivan Mladenovic
Keyword(s):  
Political Theory ◽  
Deliberative Democracy ◽  
Public Reason ◽  
Democratic Theory ◽  
Recent Literature ◽  
Public Deliberation ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Relationship

In this paper I shall investigate the relationship between public reason and deliberative democracy, mainly as it is presented in Rawls?s later political theory. Against the critics who claim that Rawls has no deliberative democratic theory, I shall argue that he presented a complex view of public deliberation that contains a set of formal and substantive requirements derived from the idea of public reason. My main aim in this paper is to defend and further elaborate the thesis that Rawls?s later political theory is crucially important for deliberative democracy. Furthermore, in light of the recent literature on deliberative democracy, I examine the relevance of Rawls?s view for addressing some current problems, but also look at some limits of the public reason perspective.

A Postscript to Professor Dahl's “Preface”

1957 ◽  
Vol 51 (4) ◽  
pp. 1040-1052
Author(s):  
Douglas N. Morgan
Keyword(s):  
Political Theory ◽  
Political Ideology ◽  
Majority Rule ◽  
Democratic Theory ◽  
Ethical Issues ◽  
Minority Rights ◽  
Theory Construction ◽  
Positive Theory ◽  
Important Sense

An exhilarating breath of fresh air has blown into the musty halls of political theory with the publication of Robert Dahl's Walgreen lectures, A Preface to Democratic Theory. We now know that discussion of minority rights and majority rule can be carried on with lucidity and serious attention to some of the intriguing intellectual puzzles which arise, as well as with reasonable rigor and a genuinely remarkable economy of expression.For all his clarity and conciseness, however, Professor Dahl has paid a fourfold philosophical price:1. His case against “Madisonian” democracy is procedural and perhaps more peripheral than profound.2. The neo-Spinozistic endeavor to formalize political ideology appears premature.3. His confessed epistemological perplexity over the ground of “intensity” judgments is peculiar.4. His refusal to wrestle with ethical issues—a refusal he shares with most “empirically oriented” political scientists—leaves them not only open and unresolved, but even unexplored. Yet, in an important sense, these issues seem to be the central ones.Following Dahl's example, I shall try to set forth these caveats as concisely as possible, leaving aside qualifications and positive theory construction.

scholarly journals What Is Democratic Theory?

2019 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. v-xx
Author(s):  
Rikki Dean ◽  
Jean-Paul Gagnon ◽  
Hans Asenbaum
Keyword(s):  
Public Policy ◽  
Economic Theory ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
Political Science ◽  
Social Theory ◽  
Democratic Theory ◽  
Special Issue

What is democratic theory? The question is surprisingly infrequently posed. Indeed, the last time this precise question appears in the academic archive was exactly forty years ago, in James Alfred Pennock’s (1979) book Democratic Political Theory. This is an odd discursive silence not observable in other closely aligned fields of thought such as political theory, political science, social theory, philosophy, economic theory, and public policy/administration – each of which have asked the “what is” question of themselves on regular occasion. The premise of this special issue is, therefore, to pose the question anew and break this forty-year silence.

scholarly journals The Social Ontology of Democracy

2019 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 157-185 ◽  
Author(s):  
Roberto Frega
Keyword(s):  
Social Organization ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
Empirical Research ◽  
Democratic Theory ◽  
Social Ontology ◽  
Social Foundations ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
The Social ◽  
Patterns Of Interaction ◽  
Theory Of Democracy

AbstractThis paper offers an account of the social foundations of a theory of democracy. It purports to show that a social ontology of democracy is the necessary counterpart of a political theory of democracy. It notably contends that decisions concerning basic social ontological assumptions are relevant not only for empirical research, but bear a significant impact also on normative theorizing. The paper then explains why interactionist rather than substantialist social ontologies provide the most promising starting point for building a social ontology of democracy. It then introduces and examines the three notions of habits, patterns of interaction, and forms of social organization, conceived as the main pillars of an interactionist social ontology of democracy and briefly discusses some major implications of this approach for democratic theory.

Between Specters of War and Visions of Peace

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gerald M. Mara
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
International Relations ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
Democratic Theory ◽  
First Century ◽  
Political Life ◽  
Frames Of Reference ◽  
War And Peace ◽  
History Of ◽  
Western Democracies

This book examines how ideas of war and peace have functioned as organizing frames of reference within the history of political theory. It interprets ten widely read figures in that history within five thematically focused chapters that pair (in order) Schmitt and Derrida, Aquinas and Machiavelli, Hobbes and Kant, Hegel and Nietzsche, and Thucydides and Plato. The book’s substantive argument is that attempts to establish either war or peace as dominant intellectual perspectives obscure too much of political life. The book argues for a style of political theory committed more to questioning than to closure. It challenges two powerful currents in contemporary political philosophy: the verdict that premodern or metaphysical texts cannot speak to modern and postmodern societies, and the insistence that all forms of political theory be some form of democratic theory. What is offered instead is a nontraditional defense of the tradition and a democratic justification for moving beyond democratic theory. Though the book avoids any attempt to show the immediate relevance of these interpretations to current politics, its impetus stems very much from the current political circumstances. Since the beginning of the twenty-first century , a series of wars has eroded confidence in the progressively peaceful character of international relations; citizens of the Western democracies are being warned repeatedly about the threats posed within a dangerous world. In this turbulent context, democratic citizens must think more critically about the actions their governments undertake. The texts interpreted here are valuable resources for such critical thinking.

The possibility of democratic socialism in Habermas

2021 ◽  
pp. 136843102098689
Author(s):  
Pedro A. Teixeira
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Deliberative Democracy ◽  
Economic Organization ◽  
Democratic Socialism ◽  
Theory Of Justice ◽  
Liberal Democratic ◽  
Political Economic ◽  
Theory Of Democracy ◽  
Economic Regime ◽  
The Ideal

In keeping with the radical openness of his theory of democracy, Habermas avoided pre-determining the ideal mode of economic organization for his favoured model of deliberative democracy. Instead of attempting a full-blown derivation, in this article, I propose adapting the Rawlsian method of comparing different political–economic regimes as candidate applications of his theory of justice to Habermas’s theory of deliberative democracy. Although both theorists are seen as endorsing liberal democratic world views, from the perspective of political economy, the corollary of their conceptions of democracy would arguably veer elsewhere: in Rawls’s case, into the territory of property-owning democracy or democratic socialism, and in Habermas’s, into any political–economic regime which guarantees the real exercise of full political and discursive liberties against the background of legitimate lawmaking. The ultimate aim of this article is to discuss whether a concrete conception of democratic socialism, if any, is compatible with Habermas’s theory of deliberative democracy.

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