Article contents
Social Choice Versus Populism? An Interpretation of Riker's Political Theory
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 27 January 2009
Extract
William Riker is one of the most influential political scientists at present writing on the theory and practice of democracy. A quick count on my part of the Social Science Citation Index, normally a Siva of academic reputations, revealed nearly one thousand entries under Riker's name between 1971 and the beginning of 1982. Not only is his work frequently cited, it is read long after it is originally published. The Theory of Political Coalitions, probably his best known work, was published in 1962, and is still seriously discussed by those engaged in the empirical study of political coalitions. Moreover, Riker has always been anxious to show the relevance of technical work in political science to the political philosophy of democracy. His work therefore represents not simply an impressive scholarly and academic achievement, but also an important contribution to the more wide-ranging public debate about the nature and value of democracy.
- Type
- Review Article
- Information
- Copyright
- Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1984
References
1 Riker, William H., The Theory of Political Coalitions (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1962).Google Scholar
2 See for example Browne, Eric C. and Dreijmanis, John, eds, Government Coalitions in Western Democracies (New York: Longman, 1982).Google Scholar
3 Riker, William H., Study of Local Politics: A Manual (New York: Random House, 1959).Google Scholar
4 Riker, William H., Democracy in the United States (New York: Macmillan, 1953).Google Scholar In the text I have relied upon the second edition, published in 1965, since it is more accessible and substantially unchanged from the first.
5 Riker, William H., Liberalism Against Populism (San Francisco: W. H. Freeman, 1982).Google Scholar
6 ‘Towards a More Responsible Two-Party System’, a Report of the Committee on Political Parties, American Political Science Association, supplement to American Political Science Review, XLIV (1950), No. 3.Google Scholar
7 Liberalism Against Populism, pp. 10, 251.Google Scholar
8 Democracy in the United States, pp. 1–34.Google Scholar
9 Democracy in the United States, p. 66.Google Scholar
10 Democracy in the United States, p. 86.Google Scholar
11 Democracy in the United States, pp. 98–104.Google Scholar
12 Arrow, Kenneth, Social Choice and Individual Values, 2nd edn (New York: Wiley, 1963).Google Scholar
13 Black, Duncan, The Theory of Committees and Elections (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1958).Google Scholar
14 The Theory of Political Coalitions, p. 33.Google Scholar
15 Downs, Anthony, An Economic Theory of Democracy (New York: Harper, 1957).Google Scholar
16 Riker does pay some attention to the relative costs of forming different coalitions by introducing the idea of ‘side-payments’ which the members of a proto-coalition may offer to outsiders to induce them to join. Some aspects of ideological compatibility or incompatibility might be captured through the use of this idea – for instance where a side-payment takes the form of a promise to modify one's legislative programme. This is a less demanding way for ideological considerations to enter a theory of coalition formation than would be true of those theories in which ideological similarity is explicitly required. Compare, for instance, Axelrod, Robert, Conflict of Interest: A Theory of Divergent Goals with Applications to Politics (Chicago: Markham, 1970)Google Scholar and de Swaan, Abram, Coalition Theories and Cabinet Formations: A Study of Formal Theories of Coalition Formations Applied to Nine European Parliaments After 1918 (Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1973).Google Scholar
17 I have constructed my interpretation of the argument from The Theory of Political Coalitions, Chap. 2 and Appendix 1, and from Riker, William H. and Ordeshook, Peter C., An Introduction to Positive Political Theory (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1973)Google Scholar, Chap. 7.1 advise the interested reader who is new to Riker's theory to begin with Chap. 2 of The Theory of Political Coalitions, then to go to Positive Political Theory and then back to the appendix of the former work.
18 Hardin, Russell, ‘Hollow Victory: The Minimum Winning Coalition’, American Political Science Review LXX (1976), 1202–14.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
19 There is of course a long-standing debate about realism and anti-realism in the philosophy of science. See, for example, Nagel, Ernest, The Structure of Science (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1961)Google Scholar, Chap. 6 and Ryan, Alan, The Philosophy of the Social Sciences (London: Macmillan, 1970), pp. 84–97.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
20 The Theory of Political Coalitions, pp. 54–76.Google Scholar
21 Dodd, L. C., Coalitions in Parliamentary Governments (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1976)Google Scholar and Schofield, Norman, ‘Political Fragmentation and the Stability of Coalition Governments in Western Europe’, paper prepared for European Public Choice Society Meeting, 03 1982.Google Scholar
22 Axelrod, , Conflict of Interest, pp. 179–83Google Scholar and de Swaan, , Coalition Theories and Cabinet Formations, pp. 147–283.Google Scholar
23 The Theory of Political Coalitions, p. 248.Google Scholar
24 Madison, James in The Federalist Papers, edited with an introduction by Rossiter, Clinton (New York: Mentor, 1961), No. 51.Google Scholar
25 Barry, Brian, Sociologists, Economists and Democracy (London: Collier Macmillan, 1970), Chap. 2.Google Scholar
26 For this strict public choice assumption, see, e.g. Buchanan, James M. and Tullock, Gordon, The Calculus of Consent (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1962), pp. 17–30.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
27 The Theory of Political Coalitions, pp. 108–14.Google Scholar
28 Federalism: Origin, Operation, Significance.
29 Federalism, p. 11.Google Scholar
30 Federalism, p. 111.Google Scholar
31 An Introduction to Positive Political Theory, Chap. 3.
32 Federalism, p. 136.Google Scholar
33 May, Kenneth O., ‘A Set of Independent Necessary and Sufficient Conditions for Simple Majority Decision’, Econometrica, XX (1952), 680–84CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Still, Jonathan W., ‘Political Equality and Election Systems’, Ethics, XCI (1981), 375–94.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
34 Liberalism Against Populism, pp. 181–92.Google Scholar
35 Liberalism Against Populism, pp. 233–53.Google Scholar
36 Nozick, Robert, Anarchy, Stale and Utopia (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1974), Chap. 10.Google Scholar
37 Wolff, Robert Paul, In Defense of Anarchism (New York: Harper and Row, 1970), pp. 58–67.Google Scholar
38 See, for example, Rowley, Charles K. and Peacock, Alan T., Welfare Economics: A Liberal Restatement (London: Martin Robertson, 1975), pp. 19–22.Google Scholar
39 Such a theory is advanced in Ackerman, Bruce A., Social Justice in the Liberal State (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1980)Google Scholar; I have discussed aspects of this neutrality condition in Weale, Albert, ‘Review Article on Social Justice in the Liberal State’, Minnesota Law Review, LXV (1981), 685–700.Google Scholar
- 16
- Cited by