¹ Barry, Brian, Sociologists, Economists and Democracy, rev. edn. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978), Preface.Google Scholar

² Downs, Anthony, An Economic Theory of Democracy (New York: Harper and Row, 1957), p. 21Google Scholar. And see Friedman, Milton, ‘The Methodology of Positive Economies’, in his Essays in Positive Economics (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1953).Google Scholar

³ For example, see Miller, W. L., ‘Social Class and Party Choice in England: a New Analysis’, British Journal of Political Science, VIII (1978), 257–84.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

⁴ See Riker, William and Ordeshook, Peter, An Introduction to Positive Political Theory (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1973), Chaps, it and 12Google Scholar; Mueller, D. C., Public Choice (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979), Chap. 6Google Scholar; Downs, , An Economic Theory of DemocracyGoogle Scholar; Popkin, S., Gorman, J. W., Phillips, C. and Smith, J. A., ‘What Have you Done for Me Lately? Towards an Investment Theory of Voting’, American Political Science Review, LXX (1976), 779–805CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Wittman, Donald A., ‘Parties as Utility Maximizers’, American Political Science Review, LXVII (1973), 490–8CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Ordeshook, Peter, ‘The Spatial Theory of Elections, a Review and Critique’, in Budge, Ian, Crewe, Ivor and Farlie, Dennis, eds., Party Identification and Beyond (London: Wiley, 1976), pp. 285–303Google Scholar; Robertson, David, A Theory of Parly Competition (London, Wiley, 1976)Google Scholar; Budge, Ian and Farlie, Dennis, Voting and Party Competition (London: Wiley, 1977).Google Scholar

⁵ Hollis, Martin and Nell, Edward J., Rational Economic Man (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975), pp. 53–4.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

⁶ Plamenatz, John, Democracy and Illusion (London: Longman, 1973), p. 150.Google Scholar

⁷ Barry, , Sociologists, Economists and Democracy, Preface.Google Scholar

⁸ Downs, , An Economic Theory of Democracy, pp. 6–8.Google Scholar

⁹ Barry, , Sociologists, Economists and Democracy, pp. 33–4.Google Scholar

¹⁰ This issue is well treated in Ordeshook, , ‘The Spatial Theory of Elections’.Google Scholar

¹¹ Downs, , An Economic Theory of Democracy, Chap. 8Google Scholar, discusses different ADP curve configurations; see also Riker, and Ordeshook, , Introduction to Positive Political Theory, Chap. 11.Google Scholar

¹² See Budge, Ian and Farlie, Dennis, Voting and Party Competition (London: Wiley, 1977), Chap. 2.Google Scholar

¹³ See Rae, Douglas and Taylor, Michael, ‘Decision Rules and Policy Outcomes’, British Journal of Political Science, 1 (1971), 71–90.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

¹⁴ Downs, , An Economic Theory of Democracy, pp. 118–22.Google Scholar

¹⁵ See Latsis, Spiro J., ‘A Research Programme in Economies’ in Latsis, Spiro J., ed., Method and Appraisal in Economics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1976), pp. 1–41CrossRefGoogle Scholar, which discusses the research programme of situational determinism in economics. This research programme's central characteristic is the autonomy of economic decision making and the deliberate exclusion of the decision makers' inner environment from explanations of economic behaviour (p. 17). And see also the problem raised by Lindblom, Charles E.'s distinction between ‘preferences’ and ‘volitions’ in Politics and Markets (New York: Basic Books, 1977), 134–7Google Scholar. Lindblom argues that preferences are simply discovered, while choices are ‘volitions’ and ‘emergent acts of will’. Thus: ‘the process of voting is not simply a voyage of discovery, although one may make some discoveries about one's preferences. It is instead a mixing of preference, analysis and moral judgement to arrive at a state of mind and will that did not before exist. It could not have been observed as a datum because it only now has come into existence.’

¹⁶ Friedman, Milton, Price Theory (Chicago: Aldine, 1962), p. 13.Google Scholar

¹⁷ Stigler, G. J. and Becker, G. S., ‘De Gustibus Non Est Disputandum’, American Economic Review. LXVII (1977), 76–90, p. 76.Google Scholar

¹⁸ Friedman, , Price Theory, p. 13Google Scholar. But see von Weizsäcker, C. C., ‘Notes on Endogenous Change of Tastes’, Economic Theory, III (1971), 345–72CrossRefGoogle Scholar for one exception; and the use of this argument by Elster, Jon, Ulysses and ihe Sirens (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979), Chap. 6Google Scholar. For a more fundamental critique see Gintis, Herbert, ‘Consumer Behavior and the Concept of Sovereignty’, American Economic Review: Papers and Proceedings, LXII (1972), 267–78.Google Scholar

¹⁹ Stigler, and Becker, , ‘De Gustibus Non Est Disputandum’, p. 76.Google Scholar

²⁰ Stigler, and Becker, , ‘De Gustibus Non Est Disputandum’, p. 88.Google Scholar

²¹ Stigler and Becker's argument relies heavily on pushing back the level at which preferences are defined in the model to that of a fixed needs hierarchy on similar lines to Maslow's psychology. It is also confronted with typical criticisms of this approach, most notably the inter-cultural variability of ‘basic needs’ observed by anthropologists. This can only be overcome by recourse to deeper levels of fixed needs and a possible infinite conceptual regress.

²² Downs, , An Economic Theory of Democracy, p. 140.Google Scholar

²³ Schumpeter, J. A., Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy (New York: Harper, 1950), p. 263Google Scholar. Perhaps the best recent re-expression of this view is Lindblom, , Politics and Markets, Chap. 10.Google Scholar

²⁴ Budge, Ian and Farlie, Dennis, ‘Placing Party Identification within a Typology of Representations of Voting and Party Competition and Proposing a Synthesis’Google Scholar, in Budge, , Farlie, and Crewe, , Party Identification and Beyond, p. 383.Google Scholar

²⁵ Sufficient conditions for this are that each voter's utility from government has the same form of functional dependence on her distance from the government, and that voters are symmetrically distributed about the median. Plamenatz, , Democracy and Illusion, Chap. 6Google Scholar, sees Downs's justification for democracy as essentially neo-utilarian but does not present any formal arguments about utility maximization.

²⁶ Budge, and Farlie, , Voting and Party Competition, p. 197.Google Scholar

²⁷ Budge, and Farlie, , Voting and Party Competition, p. 106.Google Scholar

²⁸ S. E. Finer puts forward the ‘adversary polities’ argument that the major British parties' maintenance of a simple majority voting system repeatedly confronts the electorate with a ‘Hobson's choice’. See The Changing British Party System, 1945–79 (Washington, D.C.: American Enterprise Institute, 1980).Google Scholar

²⁹ Downs, , An Economic Theory of Democracy, pp. 130–1Google Scholar: ‘A weakening of traditional views by some cataclysmic event like World War II, a social revolution like that following upon industrialization – any such disturbing occurrence may move the modes on the political scale’.

³⁰ Downs, , An Economic Theory of Democracy, p. 140.Google Scholar

³¹ See fn. 4.

³² Robertson, , A Theory of Parly Competition, pp. 72 and 135.Google Scholar

³³ Robertson, , A Theory of Party Competition, pp. 135–6.Google Scholar

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³⁵ Page, Benjamin I. and Jones, Calvin C., ‘Reciprocal Effects of Policy Preferences, Party Loyalties and the Vote’, American Political Science Review, LXXIII (1979), 1071–89.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

³⁶ Page, and Jones, , ‘Reciprocal Effects of Policy Preferences’, 1084–5.Google Scholar

³⁷ Neustadt, Richard, Presidential Power, new edn. (New York: Wiley, 1976), Introduction (reflections on Johnson and Nixon).Google Scholar

³⁸ Page, Benjamin, Choices and Echoes in American Elections: Rational Man and Electoral Democracy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978), p. 7.Google Scholar

³⁹ See Page, , Choices and Echoes in American Elections, Chap. 9.Google Scholar

⁴⁰ It is this failure to generate compelling reasons for endogenizing preferences which in our view underlies the predominantly implicit handling of the fixed preference assumption in contemporary rational choice models.

⁴¹ Budge, and Farlie, , Voting and Party Competition, p. 170.Google Scholar

⁴² Budge, and Farlie, , Voting and Party Competition, p. 21.Google Scholar

⁴³ Budge, and Farlie, , Voting and Party Competition, p. 106.Google Scholar

⁴⁴ Downs, , An Economic Theory of Democracy, pp. 22–3.Google Scholar

⁴⁵ Robertson, , A Theory of Party Competition, Chap. 1.Google Scholar

⁴⁶ Readers may note a certain similarity between Ruritania and Wilhelmine Germany: this is deliberate.

⁴⁷ In a two-party system, where the voter's most preferred party was seen as infeasible, the voter might vote for her less preferred party (party at B in this case) rather than not voting at all. The choice might be seen as lying between voting for the party at B, or failing to vote and thus accentuating risks of foreign intervention. This situation still raises in an acute form, however, the difficulty of explaining the act of voting at all in a rational-choice framework.

⁴⁸ Ordeshook, , ‘Spatial Theory of Elections’, pp. 308–9Google Scholar. We abstract this diagram from Ordeshook's verbal model.

⁴⁹ Dunleavy, Patrick, ‘The Urban Basis of Political Alignment’, British Journal of Political Science, IX (1979), 409–43CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and ‘Some Political Implications of Sectoral Cleavages and the Growth of State Employment’, Political Studies, XXVIII (1980), 364–83, 527–49.Google Scholar

⁵⁰ See, for example, Korpi, Walter, ‘Conflict, Power and Relative Deprivation’, American Political Science Review, LXVIII (1974), 1569–78.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

⁵¹ Robertson, , A Theory of Party Competition, pp. 105–9Google Scholar. See also Tufte, Edward, Political Control of the Economy (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1978), Chap. 5.Google Scholar

⁵² Robertson, , A Theory of Parly Competition, p. 20Google Scholar, comments on this; but appeals to prejudice, which are quite common in campaign speeches, do not figure in his factor analysis.

⁵³ Crouch, Colin, Politics of Industrial Conflict (London: Fontana, 1979), Chap. 3.Google Scholar

⁵⁴ Budge, and Farlie, , Voting and Party Competition, pp. 503–4Google Scholar point to the introduction of new issues, particularly foreign policy issues, as strategic devices in countries where new political issues are important for voting, as in the United States.

⁵⁵ But for contrary statements from those concerned see Butler, David and Kavanagh, Dennis, The British General Election of February 1974 (London: Macmillan, 1975), p. 32.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

⁵⁶ For an account of party campaign activities in terms of the manipulation of issue salience, see Budge, Ian and Farlie, Dennis, Explaining and Predicting Elections: Issue Effects and Party Strategies in Twenty-three Democracies (forthcoming), Chap. 6.Google Scholar

⁵⁷ Notoriously, the institution of the city machine in American politics. See Lindblom, , Politics and Markets, Chap. 10 for an extended account of ‘volition’-shaping under polyarchy.Google Scholar

⁵⁸ Edwards, W., ‘Behavioural Decision Theory’, pp. 73–4Google Scholar, reprinted in Edwards, W. and Tversky, A., eds., Decision Making: Selected Readings (Harmondsworth, Middx.: Penguin, 1967).Google Scholar

⁵⁹ Wright, Vincent, The Government and Politics of France (Hutchinson: London, 1978), pp. 129–32.Google Scholar

⁶⁰ See, for example, MacAllister, Ian, The Northern Ireland Social Democratic and Labour Party (London: Macmillan, 1977), p. 4CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also Laver, Michael, ‘Strategic Campaign Behaviour for Election and Parties: The Northern Ireland Assembly Election of 1973’Google Scholar in Budge, , Farlie, and Crewe, , eds., Party Identification and Beyond, for an interesting attempt to test Downsian models.Google Scholar

⁶¹ Dunleavy, Patrick, Urban Political Analysis (London: Macmillan, 1980), pp. 87–90 and 135–40.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

⁶² Edelman, Murray, The Symbolic Uses of Politics (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1964), p. 73.Google Scholar

⁶³ The breaking of ranks by parties to create dissensions on formerly ‘agreed’ issues is discussed by Crewe, Ivor and Särlvik, Bo, ‘Popular Attitudes and Electoral Strategy’, in Layton-Henry, Z., ed., Conservative Party Politics (London: Macmillan, 1980), particularly on pp. 265–72Google Scholar; and by Miller, W. L.. ‘What Was the Profit in Following the Crowd?’, British Journal of Political Science, X (1980), 15–39, especially pp. 35–8.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

⁶⁴ But see the note of caution introduced in Crewe, and Särlvik, , ‘Popular Attitudes and Electoral Strategy’ (p. 259)Google Scholar, where it is argued that each party stood to lose by adopting a Powellite line.

⁶⁵ Robertson, , A Theory of Party Competition, pp. 125–37Google Scholar stresses the long-term advantage to established parties and its electoral consequences.

⁶⁶ Very crudely the structure of the game (outcomes in matrix boxes) is

⁶⁷ Downs, , An Economic Theory of Democracy, pp. 103–9Google Scholar. See also Chapman, David, ‘Models of the Working of a Two Party Electoral System’, Papers in Non-Market Decision Making, III (1967), 19–37Google Scholar which has a built-in restriction on this.

⁶⁸ We would like to thank Brian Barry for bringing this argument to our attention.

⁶⁹ See Witmann, , ‘Parties as Utility Maximizers’, which discusses parties' multiple goals.Google Scholar

⁷⁰ Robertson, , A Theory of Party Competition, pp. 31–5Google Scholar, stresses the need to maintain activist support.

⁷¹ See Budge, , Farlie, and Crewe, , ‘Rational Choice, Policy Spaces and Party Identification’Google Scholar, in Budge, , Farlie, and Crewe, , eds., Party Identification and Beyond, pp. 279–83.Google Scholar