Suchergebnisse

Positive turnout rates in the United States and elsewhere are widely
considered "an embarrassing limitation of the economic approach to
politics" because, for any one voter, "the costs of casting a ballot
in any large election are almost always greater than the potential
benefits, which are dependent on the unlikely occurrence of casting
the winning or tie vote in an election" (Knack
1992, 133). Green and Shapiro (1994), whose scathing critique of the rational choice
field centers on the work of Anthony Downs (1957), trenchantly put it: "Rational choice theorists
have trotted out an astonishing variety of conjectures about the
costs and benefits of voting, in the process generating an enormous
literature, possibly larger in terms of academic citations and sheer
bibliographic length than any other rational choice literature in
American politics" (47–48), yet they still have no answer as to why
people vote when, according to their arguments, reason says they
ought not. Grofman (1993), paraphrasing
Morris Fiorina, has referred to the failure of rational choice
theory to explain turnout as the "paradox that ate rational
choice." We are indebted to Clover
Behrend-Gethard for bibliographic assistance.