Hiring and firing public officials: rethinking the purpose of elections

Conventional theories of elections hold that an election is analogous to a consumer product market. The market analogy underlies decades of electoral theory, but this book contends that it does not capture the real nature of elections. In fact, our widespread dissatisfaction with the current state of electoral politics derives from a fundamental misunderstanding of what elections are and what purpose they serve. As the text shows, an election is a mechanism by which voters hire and fire public officials. It is not a consumer product market - it is a single employment decision

Conventional theories of elections hold that an election is analogous to a consumer product market. The market analogy underlies decades of electoral theory, but this book contends that it does not capture the real nature of elections. In fact, our widespread dissatisfaction with the current state of electoral politics derives from a fundamental misunderstanding of what elections are and what purpose they serve. As the text shows, an election is a mechanism by which voters hire and fire public officials. It is not a consumer product market - it is a single employment decision.

Conventional theories of elections hold that an election is analogous to a consumer product market. This analogy underlies decades of electoral theory, but in Hiring and Firing Public Officials, Justin Buchler contends that it does not capture the real nature of elections. As Buchler shows, an election is a mechanism by which voters hire and fire public officials. Thus, the health of democracy depends not on regular competitive elections, but on posing a credible threat to fire public officials who do not perform their jobs well. However, the purpose of that threat is to force public officials to act as faithful public servants so that they do not have to be fired. Thus, competitive elections, by most definitions, are indicative of a failure of the democratic system.